Slovenia’s ‘Non-Paper’ is no Stunt but a Worrying Omen

It suggests that ideas that were once the exclusive domain of fevered reactionaries are now gaining traction and staying power among a constellation of EU governments, albeit largely illiberal ones.

That, in turn, gets to the heart of the matter: the EU has no coherent agenda for the Western Balkans.

The era of enlargement in practice is over. The accession process will continue, but no one, not even the most optimistic analysts, believes there will be an intake of new members this decade.

That is easily attested to by the increasingly elaborate "alternative" arrangements being workshopped by various European think tanks.

If this failure to expand occurs, it will mean that by 2030 the EU will have gone 17 years without enlargement - the longest such stretch since the signing of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. And in politics, as in nature, that which ceases to grow soon ceases to exist.

That is not to say that the EU itself is likely to dissolve. But, as the Slovene non-paper suggests, it does mean that the post-2003 status quo that anchored the region to the orbit of Brussels will disappear.

This process is already underway. Russia and China are no longer mere "spoilers" but genuine geopolitical competitors, aggressively advancing opposing political projects in the region, including ones that hint at a willingness to use force.

The European Commission Beaulieu building in Brussels. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER HOSLET

Or, as the political scientist Aida Hozic recently framed it: "The proliferation of non-papers about [the] Western Balkans confirm its status as a non-space in the EU political consciousness, amply exploited and exploitable by other non-actors in this non-time."

The phrase "non-space" also...