Hoxhaj, Andi;
(2023)
Stabilising the Western Balkans through a Common Market: Opportunities and Challenges.
In: Džankić, Jelena and Kacarska, Simonida and Keil, Soeren, (eds.)
A Year Later: War in Ukraine and Western Balkan (Geo)Politics.
(pp. 86-97).
European University Institute: Italy.
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Abstract
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started on 24 February 2022, caused a major shift in global geopolitics. The invasion has brought back war at European soil and posed a challenge to the European Union as the key regional organisation. It has led to a rethinking of the Union’s role in its neighbourhood and on a global level. In these circumstances, the European Union (EU) was quick to respond in a unison manner in sanctioning Russia and expressing and delivering its support to Ukraine, thus overcoming internal disagreements between its Member States. It has also made a significant shift in its external and enlargement policy of the last three decades by responding positively to the membership applications of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia filed immediately after the invasion. The war has also put into the limelight the need for rethinking the Union’s own immediate weaknesses such as its engagement with the Western Balkans in the last two decades. The six states in the Southeastern corners of Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia), which are not members of the Union, have become a symbol of the EU’s never-ending accession policy. Progress towards membership in these countries has been by all standards slow and plagued by disputes and conflicts, within the region and with the neighbouring EU Member States. Partly due to this stagnation, over time, the region has become more vulnerable to external influences, including that of Russia (and other actors such as China, the Gulf countries, and Turkey). Whereas this vulnerability has been tolerated for a long time by the Union, in part due to its own divisions, the invasion has created a time pressure to deal with it, as has been pointed out by several authors in this symposium.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Stabilising the Western Balkans through a Common Market: Opportunities and Challenges |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.2870/275946 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.2870/275946 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Laws |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176754 |
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