In response to Jasmin Mujanovic’s comment article, ‘New Partitions are the Last Thing the Balkans Need,’ Timothy Less maintains that the Balkan countries lack even the most basic elements needed to make multi-ethnicity work, so it is time to consider a new territorial settlement.
The starting point when formulating policy is to recognise the world as it is, not as one would like it to be.
BERLIN — Metternich, the godfather of pan-European statecraft, once famously quipped that the Balkans started just beyond Vienna’s ramparts.
In the emerging EU of 27, the Balkans are everywhere.
The European Union could always be neatly divided into regional blocs that, for the most part, pursued a common agenda, whether the northern group around Germany or the southern “Club Med” countries led by France.
The Western Balkan region will face a certain delay in the EU accession process post-Brexit because a number of institutions that would have dealt with it will now have to deal with other matters, Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) Secretary General Goran Svilanović said Wednesday.
EU lives two realities. One is in our declarations, where everything is all right, and the other one on the ground where nothing is well. We say that there is Schengen regime. "Schengen" implies the protection of borders, that no one can enter, and that we do not know who he is and why he comes. Does it exist in reality? It does not exist.
Thus Miroslav Lajcak, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Slovakia speak for the daily Politika on the migrant crisis and the European response to the crisis.
NATO’s invitation to Montenegro this week to join the military alliance was more than a kindness to a small ex-Yugoslav republic. It was another sign of a battle for influence in the Balkans between Russia and the U.S.
http://www.politico.eu/article/washingtons-balkan-power-play/
Aleksandar Vucic said at the opening of the OSCE Ministerial Council that the Balkans remains "a powder keg that needs only a spark to explode again."
"I must express my concern for the stability in the Balkans. Serbia is a stable country, but several crisis situation in the region are enough - in Macedonia, Montenegro, Pristina - for the whole region be set on fire again," said Prime Minister of Serbia on Thursday.
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has told the Vienna daily Presse that "a single spark can ignite the whole region of the Western Balkans."
"As the Serbian prime minister I don't fear serious economic reforms, but I have a great fear of regional instability. A spark can ignite the whole region," warned Vucic, adding that his greatest concern is the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
War, hunger and torture are no longer commonplace in Kosovo, Albania, Serbia and Macedonia. For a decade and a half now, the states of the former Yugoslavia and their neighbors have been living in peace. Croatia and Slovenia have joined the European Union. The other Balkan countries have been working toward membership for years.
Zvezdana Kovac, Executive Director of the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe from Thessaloniki (CDRS) will host premieres of Serbia and Albania in a TV show "Okruzenje".
The governments of Serbia and Albania, in cooperation with civil society organizations, will soon launch an initiative to set up the Western Balkans Youth Office, said the participants of a press conference organized by the National Youth Council of Serbia (KOMS) on Tuesday, on the occasion of the International Youth Day, August 12.
The main theme of this year's International Youth Day is civic activism of young people, the officials said, pointing to the significance of international youth exchange programs.