What direction for the Western Balkans in a more right wing EU?
Post-elections EU does not present an optimistic future for further enlargement.
Perspectives | EU2019.05.22
According to recent forecasts, right wing populist forces could reach some 25 percent of the seats in the European Parliament.
The EU and its hitherto recognizable enlargement efforts, even if pursued with an absence of a clear strategy, would thereby be put into question even more fundamentally than before.
Something else has become apparent since the Berlin meeting: Germany continues to see the EU integration of the Western Balkans as a strategic goal.
With a volatile prospect of enlargement, the democratization efforts in the region — however moderate they may be at present — would be further weakened.
Marion Kraske
Marion Kraske studied political sciences, economics and Slavic studies. She began her career as a journalist at the German Press Agency (DPA) before joining the German First Television (ARD), and later on the German news magazine Der Spiegel. From 2005-09 she was director of the Der Spiegel office in Vienna covering the Western Balkans. In December 2015, Marion was appointed as director of the office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Sarajevo, responsible for Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Albania.
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