The Western Balkans at the crossroads of European integration and the emerging powers’ projection of influence

Abstract

The Western Balkans on the way to EU membership: progress and challenges T he Western Balkans is a heterogeneous region made up of multiple nations, states, languages, cultures and faiths. The neologism "Western Balkans" is a political, geopolitical, technical and social construct concept, used for the first time by the European Union (EU) in December 1998. This concept currently includes six states: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. Initially, Croatia was also part of it, until it joined the EU in 2013. During the 1990s, the EU demonstrated its strategic and operational presence in the Western Balkans, but it was the United States (US) that assumed the greatest role in the stabilization and pacification of the region. Moreover, although the European presence is intensifying in all areas, the US and the North