Western Balkan, according to Bodo Weber, high-member of the Council of
Democratization Policy, said that Balkan has never been a priority for
the European Union.
The organization in which he works as a political adviser is specialized in foreign policies and security in the Balkan Region, Germany and EU.
“My colleagues and I have been warning about the Russian influence in the region for about a decade”, he says in an interview for European Western Balkans.
He says that Moscow’s role in the region has been defined by its rationale for meddling – to act as a spoiler.
“By spoiling Western – primarily the EU’s – policies in the region, it attempts to enhance its own influence”, Weber says.
For him, the West has made this possible by creating a vacuum over the last ten years through its weak performance in the Western Balkans since 2005 when the US handed over Western leadership in the region to the EU.
“The EU has muddled through in the region without the sufficient political will needed to transform it. The Western Balkans has never been a priority for the EU in comparison with other EU problems such as the Euro-crisis”, the analyst says.
“The EU has remained on a kind of enlargement autopilot in the region for many years. It did not finish the job the US started in the post-war period – i.e. post-war reconstruction and creation of a conducive environment for sustainable democratization”, he adds.
As for Russia, he says they took advantage of the vacuum that occurred when Western leadership that got transferred to the EU never came – and jumped into.
Another expert of the region, Daniel Serwer, says that the lack of European perspective is encouraging declarations about Greater Albania. He reminds that the hopes for becoming EU members is what stops the efforts in the region for uniting ethnic groups, with the cost of a conflict.
“I think we are dealing with an analytic declaration. I don’t see it as something that Rama wants to achieve. It is quite the opposite, he doesn’t want it to happen. I don’t know anyone in Prishtina or Tirana who wants to be politicians of a Greater Albania”, he is quoted by Newsweek.
“I think there is a lot of frustration in Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Serbia, because the EU enlargement process is taking a long time”, Serwer declared.
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