On the Balkans, Europe has Revealed its Trump Side

Consider the borderline authoritarianism that has ensconced itself in EU member states like Poland and Hungary; or the alarming gains made by the far right in such "established" European democracies as Austria, Germany, and Italy; or the brutal border regime that the EU maintains along its Mediterranean frontier - a border regime, we should recall, that at the current rate will likely result in more than a 1,000 deaths by the end of 2019. And that is on top of the 2,262 deaths recorded in Mare Nostrum last year.

Then there is the slow-moving train wreck that is the formation of the new European Commission headed by Germany's Ursula von der Leyen, and especially the disastrous and dangerous signals that the new Commission is already sending to the Western Balkans.

The proposed appointment of Hungary's Laszlo Trocsanyi to take over the EU's enlargement portfolio distills the matter to its rotten core.

Initially, the rumour - at least in some of the Balkan press - was that Croatia's Dubravka Suica was slated for this position. That was alarming enough, as Suica was not only a prominent fellow traveler of the far right bloc in the European Parliament but also a MEP who, along with her associate Zeljana Zovko, had made a career out of spreading disinformation, specifically about the domestic politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Like Zovko, Suica's primary calling in the European Parliament appeared not to be championing the interests of Croatian citizens but the interests of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, party in Bosnia.

As it is, Suica "merely" ended up with the "Democracy and Demography" portfolio. By what logic Von der Leyen and her cohort believe the increasingly illiberal Croatian HDZ, of which Suica is a member,...