The EU Has Failed to Europeanize the Balkans

Hence, we did not only aim to "fill a gap in the field"  - no such volume existed at the time ­ but to above all provide comprehensive empirical analysis that would possibly serve both practitioners engaged with, and in, the region, and academics alike.

This is how Balkanizing Europeanization: Fight against Corruption and Regional Relations in the Western Balkans came about.

Published this year in May, the book discusses the two aforementioned research issues that represent crucial criteria in the Western Balkans EU accession process.

While systemic corruption threatens the stability and integrity of state institutions, and undermines citizens' trust in state services and the existing apparatus, fragile regional relations constantly fall prey to nationalist discourses that politicians resurrect from time to time to serve the temporary goals of everyday politics.

While media freedoms in the region are shrinking, domestic political elites continue to fail to deliver the real change that would truly open the way for their states to attain EU membership.

Our volume discusses in depth why the Europeanization of the Western Balkans has failed so far, and why such limited results of this process, in relation to the two issues researched, have been achieved.

Analyzing the situation in all the post-Yugoslav republics, we highlight the inability and unwillingness of political elites to truly fight corruption in the region, often influenced by various domestic veto players  - both formal and informal - whose interests would otherwise be endangered.

Leaders of Western Balkan states, as guest the President of Poland Andrzej Duda and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica...

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