Why the EU’s Balkan Expansion Faces a Long and Winding Road
Photographer: Armend Nimani/AFP via Getty Images
In the map of the European Union lies a conspicuous and large hole containing five former parts of Yugoslavia plus Albania. The leaders of those countries are keen to join the bloc. The EU, wary of Russia’s efforts to expand its influence over the region, is eager to accommodate them — once a long list of conditions is met.
Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. They form a cluster extending eastward from Croatia, the EU’s latest addition in 2013, all the way to Greece and Bulgaria, its poorest nation. The region is still blighted by the legacy effects of Yugoslavia’s bloody breakup: lingering ethnic enmities, economic dysfunction and global powers jostling for political influence.