The Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina Into the European Union

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the EU integration process of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dealing with the internal and external political challenges that country is facing on its path towards aspired EU membership. As one of the main internal challenges, the authors recognize a very pronounced ethnocracy and leaderocracy that captures democratic process, making the country unstable and unable to fulfill criteria even to achieve the status of candidate for EU membership. Furthermore, there is a strong influence of the neighboring countries, which were involved in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and continue to play very often an obstructive role in internal politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As the authors argue, in BiH, the issue of Euro-Atlantic integration is less a matter of political and economic transition, and more, it is not primarily an issue of stabilizing the peace and creating fundamental preconditions for overall development.

Challenges of Developing Open Policymaking in the Western Balkans

The level of openness of policymaking has gradually become an important indicator of the progress of public administration reform in countries aspiring for EU membership. Based on lessons learned from previous enlargement rounds, the EU has gradually reformed its pre-accession assistance strategy by putting more emphasis on building capacities of government bodies for implementing more open and inclusive styles of democratic governance. Nevertheless, the countries of the region are still facing substantial challenges in this area. This chapter seeks to identify main factors that affect the quality of openness of Western Balkans' governments with particular emphasis on their ability to ensure adequate access to information, transparent and predictable decision-making, and timely public participation as key components of a wider concept of government openness. It is claimed that the specific design of the EU accession negotiations favours and often legitimizes the dominance of executive while at the same time weakening the position of legislative bodies and civil society actors.

Export Competitiveness of Agri-Food Sector during the EU Integration Process: Evidence from the Western Balkans

Trade agreements with the European Union (EU) and Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) significantly influenced the liberalisation of agri-food products in Western Balkan (WB) countries. In all Western Balkan countries, there has been an intensification of the trade of agri-food products and a partial change in the regional and commodity structures of trade. This paper aims to identify comparative advantages of agri-food sectors and consider its tendencies during the EU integration process. Additionally, this paper will discuss some opportunities for improvement of the export positions of agri-food products. In that context and based on the literature review, the indexes of revealed comparative advantages and its modified version will be used as a main method for analysis in this research. Results showed that all Western Balkan countries, except Albania, have comparative advantages in exporting agri-food products. It is evident that Serbia has the highest level of comparative advantages in this sector. Moreover, this paper suggests that all countries should aim to provide the best possible positions for their agri-food products during pre-accession negotiations for EU membership and take the necessary steps towards increasing the level of competitiveness in the common EU market.

Brexit and Western Balkans

This article analyses effects of Brexit on relations between the United Kingdom and the Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). First, the symbolism of the UK departure from the EU for the Western Balkans is explained. In the following step, multiple types of relations (in trade, security, culture) between the post-Brexit UK and this region are analysed using the theoretical concepts of linkage, leverage and soft power. Finally, the consequences of Brexit on further EU enlargement are presented. The research has confirmed the initial hypotheses. First, as expected, the volume and density of UK-Western Balkan relations will be reduced after Brexit. Second, Western Balkans is of a very limited interest for the UK, primarily in security. Third, Brexit has not in a serious way changed the already existing low chances of EU accession for the Western Balkan countries. The reason for this has little to do with the UK’s presence in or absence from the EU and is rather a consequence of the majority view within the Union (that Britain had already shared before Brexit) concerning further enlargement and low level of preparation of Western Balkan countries for EU membership.

Estimating the Impact of EU Membership on United Kingdom’s Export by Using Gravity Model

After a year from the formal UK withdrawal from the EU, there are still different opinions about the potential economic impact of Brexit. This paper gives a detailed overview of the trade profile of UK and explores the determinants of United Kingdom`s export. We apply the gravity model to estimate the aggregate benefits of EU membership or the reversed, lost (foregone) benefits from leaving the EU. We measure the influence of GDP, distance, population, the EU membership, and signed free trade agreement with the trading partners on UK’s export as a dependent variable. The analysis includes data for 70 UK trading partners in a period of 48 years (from 1973 to 2020) since Great Britain become EU member. The results show that UK’s export is directly proportional to trade partner’s GDP and inversely proportional to distance. In order to estimate the average benefit due to EU membership, we estimated subsequent equations with different time periods. The coefficient decreases and becomes negative as we shorten the time periods, proving that the average trade advantage due to EU membership diminishes over time. According to the economic theory of regional integration, it is expected that the coefficient increases due to many rounds of enlargement, especially the biggest one in 2004 as well as due to the introduction of the Euro. On the contrary, as we shorten the time periods in the analysis, we obtained increasing coefficient for the variable free trade agreements. This confirms that trade exchange within FTA has significantly higher effect on United Kingdom’s export in comparison with trade within EU.

Evolution in Public Governance Models: From Administrative Management to the Hybrid and Normative Concept of Good Governance (Part II)

Bulgaria adopts the principles of good governance along with its EU membership. That occurred with harmonization of public policies. The study makes a review on the application of the following principles of good governance: sustainability and long-term orientation in development, effectiveness and efficiency, accountability and transparency and the adoption of these principles at local level. The general evaluation: Bulgaria follows and applies in great extent the principles of good governance, but in the reality, there are numerous deviations, delays and negligence, which lead to their partial implementation. The country needs more political commitment, regulatory changes and institutional efforts to reach better levels of good governance.

“Our migrant” and “the other migrant”: migration discourse in the Albanian media, 2015–2018

The expansion of research on migration over recent decades has neglected sending and transit countries. Whether in terms of their internal development, their diaspora policy, their shift from primarily sending countries to (potential) transit or destination countries, or the issue of return migration and reintegration into home societies – all these topics deserve further exploration. This paper seeks to redress this by examining Albania, a sending country with almost a third of its population living externally, and which is recently shifting to a transit and potential destination country. Media discourse on migration was analysed, recalling its power to reflect as well as shape public opinion. Employing a quantitative approach, media discourse on migrants from 2015 to 2018 was examined. Some 55 web-based media were identified, along with twenty TV channels, 61 TV programs, and 317 articles. A qualitative analysis was then used to detect the tone of the discourse and gain a deeper understanding of the messages conveyed. Results showed that migration from the perspective of a sending country has dominated Albanian media discourse over the monitoring period. Major identified issues include: migration and demographic challenges, migration and multiculturalism in societies receiving Albanian migrants, and asylum seeking as a recent trend in Albanian emigration often standing in the way of potential Albanian EU membership. The regional migration “crisis” and the potential of Albania becoming a transit or destination country for refugees has only gained limited attention. The binary of “our migrant” versus “the other migrant” became a key distinction.

Who Are Belgrade’s Most Desired Allies?

Serbia presents itself as a country skillfully balancing between the European Union (EU), Russia, and Asia, trying to maintain good political and economic relations with the biggest players on the international arena. The Covid-19 pandemic and China’s media-publicized assistance to Serbia has affected the perception of which countries are seen as Belgrade’s true allies. At the same time, Serbia remains a EU candidate country (membership negotiations officially started in 2014) and the European Union is not only Serbian biggest trading partner, but also the biggest donor. The main aim of the article is to compare the distinctive meaning that EU membership and cooperation with non-EU countries (mainly China and Russia) has for Serbian political parties, taking into account that the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘vaccine diplomacy’ influenced the Serbian public discourse and perception on who is the Belgrade’s most trustful partner.

Rethinking Europe, Rethinking Regions

The question of the limits of Europe as a political community has been one of the most persistent questions in European debates. This question cannot be answered with simple references to Europe’s physical geography, its cultural values and practices, the formal rules of the European Union, nor the commercial or security interests of its member states. This chapter offers concluding observations on the book’s findings and their implications. It first summarizes the book’s quantitative and qualitative findings regarding the evolution of EU membership norms since the late 1950s and their contribution to EU decision-making on the enlargement of the community during this period. It then considers the study’s general lessons for our understanding of regions and regional integration. And finally, it combines normative critique and historically-informed speculation in a discussion of salient issues in the future of European governance.

The Limits of Europe

This book offers a new approach to the dynamics of regional integration, engages the debate over the geographic and normative limits of Europe, and challenges the conventional wisdom on the enlargement of the European Union. It demonstrates that membership norms that change over time have been more influential than economic or security interests in shaping EU decisions on which states are eligible to join the community and which are not. It includes a genealogy of EU membership norms since the late 1950s, a triple analysis (cross-tabulations, logistic regression, and qualitative comparative analysis) of all EU decisions on membership eligibility, and detailed process-tracing of EU decision-making over decades on the membership eligibility of Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine. The findings challenge taken-for-granted understandings of the course of European integration and what it means for a state to be ‘European’. The argument is directly relevant to how regional communities in other parts of the world decide on their own geographic and normative limits.