The European Union’s approach to the Western Balkans is “positive realpolitik” rather than turning a blind eye to local autocrats, European Commissioner of European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn said during a visit to Belgrade on June 9. Hahn also implied that Balkan politicians would not implement reforms without external pressure – and specifically EU pressure – and reaffirmed his determination to bring the Western Balkan countries into the union, despite a...

A gay woman has been appointed prime minister of Serbia in a double first for the EU-candidate state. Ana Brnabić, 41, a graduate of the University of Hull in England, is the Balkan nation’s first gay PM and first female PM. Brnabić’s appointment, which comes in the same week that Leo Varadkar was formally elected as Ireland’s first gay PM, is all the more remarkable given that virulent homophobia is still widespread in the Balkans. The Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, announced on...

Albania’s “on again, off again” election is back on after the opposition ended its threat of a boycott last month. But allegations of a spiraling drug-trafficking problem, and claims and counterclaims of criminal links to politics, are still an unedifying sight in a European Union candidate state. Prolonged political deadlock over recent months is a sign not only of Albania’s deep political divisions and dysfunctions, but also of the EU’s limited ability to use its leverage in the...

“There is a question mark over Poland’s European future today,” former Polish Prime Minister and current European Council President Donald Tusk said earlier this month in a remarkable statement for someone intimately connected with both Warsaw and Brussels. His comments came as Poland’s conservative government, which regards Tusk as its archenemy, showed little sign of backing off its populist drive to overhaul the country, despite international pressure and vocal domestic opposition. Last...

Serbia’s short-lived withdrawal of all of its diplomats from neighboring Macedonia in late August, following a narrowly avoided regional trade war, brought the timeworn phrase “Balkan tensions” back into the news yet again. Both events are a sign of how strained international relations in the Balkans can still be, and of the difficulties that lie ahead as the region’s countries look to integrate into the European Union—and with one another. However dramatic, the spat between Serbia and...