Research Detail
| 2024/07/18 / Erste Group Research |
Western Balkan and the EU - who is ready? Integrating the Western Balkan countries into the European Union is both feasible and desirable. However, longstanding disagreements and ethnic disputes continue to cast a shadow over the Western Balkans. The accession of Western Balkan countries to the EU has stalled due to issues within the union as well as in the region itself. Renewed commitment on both sides is needed to break the current impasse. The most obvious explanation for the impasse is the EU’s own lack of commitment to the Western Balkans. The region is firmly on the union’s agenda but has never been a top item. Between the eurozone crisis in the early and mid-2010s, the crisis in Ukraine in 2014–2015, the refugee wave in 2015–2016, the coronavirus pandemic, and the more recent Russian aggression in Ukraine, there is always another priority that relegates WB further down on the union’s to-do list. That said, there is general consensus that in the past two years the EU has woken up to the reality of the importance and urgency of enlargement. Yet, while the “new” candidates in the East are filled with beginners’ enthusiasm, many in the WB region are still sceptical, which is understandable given 20 years of hesitation. The scepticism, however, does not explain or justify the levels of stagnation in implementing basic democratic and rule-of-law reforms in the candidate countries |
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General information
| Author | Erste Group Research |
| Date | 2024/07/18 |
| Language |  |
| Product name | CEE Economies Special Report |
| Topic in focus | FX, Macro/ Fixed income |
| Economy in focus | CEE |
| Currency in focus | - |
| Sector in focus | - |
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