Western Balkans – Integration perspectives

Since the accession prospects of the Western Balkans countries have remained blurred, this paper presents an attempt to examine the broader context of European integrations of the Western Balkans, i.e., to analyse the perspectives of integrations through the prism of challenges that this process is facing. These challenges, which are at the same time the determinants (milestones), are under an umbrella of broader foreign policy development. They are all connected and mutually conditioned. Therefore, they cannot be analysed in isolation, but in interplay, i.e. as part of a mosaic. For the purpose of this paper, three groups of challenges are identified and the paper’s structure follows them. After short introductory notes (Part I.), the paper gives a brief overview of the challenges that the EU has been facing for the last two decades (Part II.). Thereafter, the challenges of Western Balkans countries’ integrations are examined (Part III.). Finally, the paper focuses on challenges of a new enlargement methodology (Part IV.)