The EU choosing “stability” in the current moment means de facto endorsement of violent repression in Serbia. The EU’s timid messaging has in fact encouraged Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić to step up his repression. He unleashed violent thugs on the protesters and launched a relentless media campaign denouncing the students as “terrorists” paid by Serbia’s enemies.
The policy posture from Brussels remains on autopilot, effectively siding with Serbia’s authoritarian president Aleksandar Vučić against the student-led protesters, while continuing ‘happy talk’ about the enlargement process.
Donald Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election in the United States makes it imperative for Europe to act decisively, and quickly, in the one region where it has real power – the Western Balkans. The EU has ten weeks – until Trump’s inauguration – to get serious about its geopolitical role.
A European ‘Foreign Agents Registration Act’ would systematically expose the countless lobbyists and influence-peddlers on foreign powers’ payrolls, giving Europeans an idea of which countries are lobbying most aggressively and toward what goals.
The European Commission has asked the member states’ leaders assembling in Brussels next week for the customary end-of-year European Council to approve EU candidate status for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Doing so would be a mistake.
Ukraine’s EU application is a chance to recalibrate not only the enlargement process, but the entire European project. EU leaders ought to embrace it.
In its quest for a quick deliverable in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the European Union is trying to broker a deal that risks entrenching the power of Croat nationalists who are resisting moves to make the country more functional.
The Office of the High Representative, tasked with coordinating international actors and ensuring implementation of the non-military components of the 1995 Dayton peace accords, has languished for a decade and a half.
The EU could blow up the Kosovo-Serbia negotiations’ reset. Should Miroslav Lajčák indeed be appointed, the two senior EU diplomats dealing with Kosovo would both come from the small minority of member states that do not recognise Kosovo.
The European Commission just missed an opportunity on managing EU enlargement. Instead of taking a hard look at why it’s currently failing, the commission tried to appease the most vocal opponent of enlargement – France – with largely cosmetic changes.
Paris is, by default, now steering the EU’s overall policy agenda toward the Western Balkans. This seems to be the opening volley and test bed for Macron’s goal of recalibrating the entire EU agenda.
There has been little substantial analysis, since the Macron veto, of why so much money and effort in the Balkans has failed to result in the political and economic transformation needed to prepare candidates for full membership.
By blocking accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, French president Emmanuel Macron is siding with illiberals.
Past concessions have merely delayed the day of reckoning with Bosnian Serb separatists.
For the first time in seven years, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s bid to join the European Union has received a boost.