EU Enlargement and Common Foreign and Security Policy in the Western Balkans
EU Enlargement and Common Foreign and Security Policy in the Western Balkans

Summary/Abstract: From the early 1990s onwards, the EU has assumed ever greater responsibility in shaping post-Yugoslav security. However, from the very beginning there have been indications that EU foreign policy bodies lacked synergy and that “full coherency between the EU political agenda and EU civilian-based activity on the ground” was missing. The perspective of future membership in the European Union has had a profound transformative impact on the Western Balkan countries: it has worked as a carrot to initiate and sustain reforms; it represented a framework for conflict settlement; and an effective incentive to improve regional co-operation. In view of a further stabilisation and pacification of the region it remains of vital importance to keep up the erspective of full membership of the EU. However, in light of the EU constitutional crisis, ambiguity over future enlargement arises in a critical moment when the European Union faces serious challenges in the Balkans, resulting in renewed contradictions between intergovernmental (CFSP) and community (SAP) approaches. Since conditionality is more and more seen as an obstacle, not incentive, to developing relations with the EU, policies towards the region seem again to be drifting apart, thereby risking to seriously endanger achieved progress with regard to coherency between goals, policies and instruments of the EU.

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