Les Balkans et l’UE : circuit intégré

Infographie : F. Descheemaekere

The Balkans and the EU:  Integrated circuit

[The Economist]

EUROPEAN integration is still the central strategic goal of all Western Balkan countries. But Europe’s crisis has changed the political landscape. Until its onset several things were clear. For members of the European Union the point of bringing in the former Yugoslavs and Albania was to stabilise the region while for the Balkan countries the idea was to use the process to build modern and functional states. Now all bets are off. No one knows what the future holds because no one knows what the EU will look like in a year’s time let alone ten.

Vesna Pusić, Croatia’s foreign minister, says that when her country joins the EU in July next year it will have taken 12 years and four months of hard work to get there since the formal beginning of the process and that the EU that Croatia will join is not the same as it thought it was joining at the beginning. Behind Croatia, the remaining countries, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia are all at various stages along the path, but it will be years before the most advanced of them, currently Montenegro, will be ready to join. All this, and what it means, is discussed in an excellent paper by Dimitar Bechev, of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“The euro crisis has not killed enlargement but it is relegating the region to the outermost circle in a multi-speed Europe – the periphery of the periphery.”

Lire : economist.com