[ISL] The Western Balkans
Sep. 20th, 2005 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldOver at A Fistful of Euros, Douglas Muir is continuing his recent spree of Balkans-related posts by providing his readers with a rundown of the prospects that any of the western Balkan states will get into the European Union, post-constitution. Croatia is the likeliest to get in, with rule of law issues and the international tribunals at The Hague being the only things to slow it down. The rest--Albanian and Macedonian states still impoverished and not in proper shape, a Bosnia-Herzegovina fragmented between the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska, a rump Yugoslavia itself likely to fragment into three states amid much bitterness--aren't likely to get in at all for the foreseeable future.
This--the isolation of two-thirds of the former Yugoslavia in a uniting Europe--is a pity, not least because in the peculiar circumstances of the Cold War all of these very territories save Albania were plugged into the western European economic, social, and even political structures which ended up culminating in the European Union. Earlier, Douglas observed that seven extra-European territories with a combined population in excess of many European Union member-states got into the European Union simply because they are territories of European Union member-states. Now we're faced with the serious and discouraging prospect of islands isolated from the European Union inside the European continent, of a region deprived of the institutional and moral support that helped their most fortunate extra-European territories so seriously. Isolated islands--geographical, human--never do good things for their inhabitants.
This--the isolation of two-thirds of the former Yugoslavia in a uniting Europe--is a pity, not least because in the peculiar circumstances of the Cold War all of these very territories save Albania were plugged into the western European economic, social, and even political structures which ended up culminating in the European Union. Earlier, Douglas observed that seven extra-European territories with a combined population in excess of many European Union member-states got into the European Union simply because they are territories of European Union member-states. Now we're faced with the serious and discouraging prospect of islands isolated from the European Union inside the European continent, of a region deprived of the institutional and moral support that helped their most fortunate extra-European territories so seriously. Isolated islands--geographical, human--never do good things for their inhabitants.
