For Italy, as one of the most important economic partners of the Balkan countries, the Europeanization of the Western Balkans is a clear strategic national interest, primarily for economic, but also for political and security reasons and it constantly provides strong support to the countries of the region in this process [...]
The path of the Balkans to the Mediterranean geographically goes through three countries – Italy, Greece and Turkey. Of these three countries, Italy is the most important for the Balkans in the European context, because it is the third strongest country in the EU (a country that until recently held the position of Governor of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, which is currently, as the current Italian Prime Minister, a “new” hope of European politics), while the influence of Greece within the EU is still weaker than the Italian one, and Turkey is not an EU member at all. Therefore, it can be said that Italy is not only a mediator of the Balkans towards the Mediterranean, but also one of the main mediators towards the European Union. Especially since Italy, due to its decades-long economic stagnation and frequent political instabilities, can better understand similar economic and political problems faced by the Balkan states, which, for example, is a little harder for economically and politically “supersonic” Germany.
Italy is thus a kind of natural “hostess” of the Balkans towards the Mediterranean and the European Union, and undoubtedly the strongest intra-European advocate of the accession to the EU of those Balkan states that have not yet become members of the Union. Its objective shortcomings in the European context (economic stagnation and frequent political instability) are in fact its comparative advantages in communicating with Balkan countries plagued by similar problems. Simply put, the political mentality of Italy is closer to the Balkans than, for example, the political mentality of the Germans or Scandinavians. That is why Italy is the strongest and the most agile advocate for the Balkans in the European Union, especially since Italy’s undoubted strategic interest is for the entire Balkans to join the European Union and thus practically solve the problem of stability of its north-eastern neighborhood, preventing any instabilities if this space becomes the scene of any future crisis.
Italy ‘s strategic cooperation with the Western Balkans was institutionalized at the Ancona Summit in 2000., where started so-called Adriatic and Ionian Initiative, whose members today are Italy, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Northern Macedonia. Later, in 2014, this strategic initiative was “updated” with the establishment of the European Union Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR), in which Italy and the Balkan countries are the main strategic partners and factors. This strategy is one of several European macro strategies and its role is to connect the Mediterranean with the Balkans through the “initiative of two seas” – the Adriatic and the Ionian. Italy has been wisely chosen as one of the main countries of these initiatives because it is one of the most important economic partners of the Balkan countries and alternates with Germany in the first two positions as main foreign trade partner of the Balkan countries – and it also has the capacity to be a kind of geopolitical air-bag for the traditional “seismic” Balkans in geopolitical terms.
Namely, Italy has the capacity to approach the Balkan region – which is traditionally geopolitically very unstabile as a meeting place of various geopolitical powers (EU, USA, Russia, China, Turkey) – with a certain geopolitical balance, since has always been, even during the Cold War, a country of geopolitical balance, since had correct relations with then Soviet Union, as it has correct relations with today’s Russia (and China), so it can positively influence geopolitical events in the Balkans, as a kind of “geopolitical air-bag”, thus protecting as well the stability of its northeastern neighborhood.
For Italy, as one of the most important economic partners of the Balkan countries, the Europeanization of the Western Balkans is a clear strategic national interest, primarily for economic, but also for political and security reasons and it constantly provides strong support to the countries of the region in this process. However, despite Italy’s strong political support for EU enlargement to the Balkans, since 2011, as the economic crisis deepened, Italy’s political role in the region has been weakening, and its commitment to the European integration of the Western Balkans is today – as with other European powers – more declarative than essential.
In order not to get lost in empty declarations about the “European future of the region”, we should rethink the relationship between the Western Balkans and the European Union – and instead of repeating like parrots the phrases about the “imminent” full membership of the Western Balkans in the EU; for which there are less and less chances for it to happen in the foreseeable future (both due to the process in the EU itself and wider global processes) – it is necessary to devise new and creative solutions for the future. One such solution could be to define some kind of future privileged partnership for non-EU countries of the Western Balkans in relations with the EU, if full membership proves to be an unrealistic option in the short term. This is already enabled by the so-called the new methodology of the Western Balkans’ accession to the EU, proposed by French President Macron, which allows certain sectors of the state and society – in line with possible successful reform moves – to be fully integrated into the EU system, even if there is no explicit full membership.
Finally, Italy itself will be – given the possible future strategic developments in the EU and the possible divergence of Germany and France after the elections that follow in both countries this year and next (if the Greens win in Germany and Le Pen in France) – a point of balance on the European libra and a shock absorber of its internal and external relations. That is why Italy is important not only in the context of the “untried” Europeanization of the Balkan region, but also in the future general European context, because it will be oil or water on the fire of all future European crises.
Finally, some Balkan countries, such as Serbia, have signed a strategic partnership agreement with Italy, which is not only a declarative, but an essential thing for these countries, given what the future holds. Between Italy and Serbia, despite disagreements over Kosovo’s status, there are no broader strategic suspicions as in the time of former Yugoslavia(s), when Belgrade and Rome had disputes over certain segments of the Adriatic coast. Since Serbia is no longer strategically present in the Adriatic, Italy, like Greece, is a natural partner for stabilizing the space between our countries and the entire Adriatic-Ionian space, as is Serbia, as a kind of continental regional power, a natural partner of Italy and Greece for the same purpose, so these countries are today the main strategic pillars of the Adriatic and Ionian Initiative. In previous years, Serbia and Italy even have a tradition of holding joint government sessions, and without a doubt they are the main axis for connecting the Mediterranean region and the Balkan region.
Given the fact that full membership for all Western Balkan countries in the EU is on the very, very long run and that it seems that – if it ever happens – it will not happen soon, all initiatives and agreements on strategic or privileged partnership, such as the one that Serbia have with Italy, are useful for connecting the Western Balkans with the European Union, what could finally be crowned in the future with an “umbrella agreement” on a privileged partnership between the region and the European Union, if the option of full membership for all Balkan countries would be too long on the wait or unrealistic at all in the long run.
Article was originally published in French journal France Forum in French language.
About the author: Dr. Neven Cvetićanin is President of Forum for Strategic Studies and Senior Research Associate at Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade, Serbia.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
The image of Srebrenica tells us more about the reality of the majority of the media and of course the “Muslim victim card” is being used in order to cleanse the Bosniak Muslims. After all, from enslaving Orthodox Christians during their brotherly love with the Turkish slave masters of the Ottoman Empire to having Muslim SS units who supported Adolf Hitler; then “victimhood” is needed in order to justify their history and culture.Of course the wishy-washy brigade will tell us that the Ottoman period was enlightened and that the system of taking the eldest Christian boy (devshirme system) in the ...
Dear Readers and Friends:The distinguished and knowledgeable international commentator William Engdahl, in a superb statement, has expressed the view I gave you that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 28 at the 70th anniversary of the United Nations changed the balance of power in the world. Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price ...
November 1991 is a month and year that will forever live in infamy when it comes to one of the most grievous crimes committed under the rubric of Western foreign policy, as it was on this month in this year that the break-up and destruction of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was set in train.The Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia was a body set up in 1991 by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community (EEC) in response to the conflict that had broken out between separatists in Slovenia and Croatia and the ...
The United States, Europe, and their partners must officially recognize the Mountainous Karabagh Republic within its constitutional frontiers.Stepanakert, Mountainous Karabagh — I no longer know what to do on April 24—or where to go. This is the day Armenians across the globe commemorate the genocide in 1915 that destroyed the Armenian people and its homeland of thousands of years.Those killing fields, the homes of my grandparents, are located in historic western Armenia—now eastern Turkey. But a century later, this very region has erupted in all-out war. Turkish forces are on the offensive again, this time, Armenians having been eliminated, against ...
How much longer are we accepting the tyrannical dictate of the American rulers? It gets worse by the day – and it looks like the western world’s “leaders” (sic – so sic!) are caving in ever more to the American killing machine – the European Union – and all its members heads of state, and all the Zion-Anglosaxons and Japan – no one dares standing up and shouting “NO!” – no more of your hegemonic atrocities! – But they all bend over backwards to please a criminal empire, run like the Barbarians.Imagine, the so-called world leader invites you to a ...
The United States and its NATO allies launched a military intervention in 1999 that helped the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) win its secessionist campaign against Serbia. U.S. officials justified that intervention on the grounds that Serbian security forces were committing pervasive war crimes against the Kosovar insurgents. American supporters of the KLA also asserted that the secessionists were staunch Western‐style democrats mounting a noble resistance against Slobodan Milosevic’s corrupt, brutal regime, and that America had a moral obligation to support them. Speaking at a pro‐Kosovo march in Washington D. C., Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) stated that the “United States of America and the Kosovo ...
The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in ...
Slobodan Milosevic was faced with an extremely serious and deadly situation in the 1990s. Indeed, that applied to all Serbs at that time in the Balkans, and still does to this very day. Mr Milosevic was up against the West, led by America and followed by the European Union. After realising that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could not be saved, Milosevic did everything he could to safeguard the newly created Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and protect Serbs living in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and Metohija. And because of that, the West imposed crippling and merciless sanctions on the ...
Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at Tools For Freedom.com (FaceBook here), writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.ISIS is a US-Israeli creation, a fact as clear as the sky is blue. It’s a truth as black and white as the colors on their flag. For many alternative news readers, this may be patently obvious, but this article is written for the large majority of ...
The interest of European scholars, primarily German and Austrian, in research on Albanian ethnical origin, rose gradually during the second half of the 19th century.[1] Their interest in Albanian and Balkan studies came later in comparison with the study of other ethnic groups and regions in Europe. The reason was that Euro-centrism of the late 19th century and the early 20th century defined the Balkans and its nations as the territory and peoples of obscure identity. In contrast to the “real Europe”, the Balkans was seen as the “Orient”, not part of Europe at all, and above all, it was ...
In the thousand year long-history of Serbs, Kosovo and Metohia were for many centuries the state center and chief religious stronghold, the heartland of their culture and springwell of its historical traditions. For a people who lived longer under foreign rule than in their own state, Kosovo and Metohia are the foundations on which national and state identity were preserved in times of tribulation and founded in times of freedom.The Serbian national ideology which emerged out of Kosovo’s tribulations and Kosovo’s suffering (wherein the 1389 St. Vitus Day Battle in Kosovo Polje occupies the central place), are the pillars of ...
“Ethnic affiliation has never been forgotten in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. It did play a certain role, and it did influence decisions even during the Tito's era of strict ‘Brotherhood and Unity’”[Várady T., “Minorities, Majorities, Law and Ethnicity: Reflections of the Yugoslav Case”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 19, 1997, p. 42]People, nation and stateI agree that “in Yugoslavia, all political problems are intimately linked with the issue of nationalism”.[i] Indeed, the fixing of inner or administrative borders between Yugoslavia’s nations and nationalities became one of the main issues that forged nationalism after the Second World War onward and ...
The British Labour Party no longer represents the working class. Under UK prime minister Tony Blair, the Labour Party became a vassal of the One Percent. The result has been a rebellion in the ranks and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, a principled Labourite intent on representing the people, a no-no in Western “democracies.”Corbyn is too real for the Labour Party Blairites, who hope to be rewarded with similar nest eggs as Blair for representing the capitalist One Percent. So what is the corrupted Labour Party doing to prevent Corbyn’s election?The answer is that it is denying the vote to ...
Much is being written regarding the Charlie Hebdo issue in Paris, France. I do not condone any killing but at the same time I do not support issues that violate human rights, religious freedom or freedom of speech and thoughts. Using cartoons to condemn Divine thoughts and beliefs is utterly wrong because they fall under hate crimes and not under freedom of speech as we are lied about. The perpetrators of hate continue to be protected. Islam is under attack and its adherents, the Muslims, are being targeted through provocation. In a recent article Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev’s trial: Cui ...
Part IEthnolinguistic SerbdomSerbia’s Prince Miloš’s schemes to solve the „Serbian Question“ were based exclusively on the historical (state) rights of the Serbs. However, during his reign, a new and cardinal dimension on an understanding of Serbian national identity and, therefore, the idea of the creation of the national state of the Serbs was introduced into Serbian political thought by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864) who framed the concept of a linguistic Serbdom.In his brief essay “Срби сви и свуда” (“Serbs All and Everywhere”),[1] V. S. Karadžić established the linguistic criteria for determining Serbian national self-identity and reformulation of the whole concept ...
Never has US intentions in Asia been so obvious. Attempts to portray America’s role in the region as constructive or necessary have been ongoing since the end of World War II, however, recently, with Asia able to begin determining its own destiny for itself, the tone from Washington has become increasingly curt and direct.US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s remarks during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore were all but a proclamation of US hegemony over Asia – a region of the planet quite literally an ocean away from Washington.In Reuters’ article, “U.S. flexes muscles as Asia worries about South China ...
After the Donald Trump administration’s decision to recognize the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, the national aspirations of the Palestinian people to live in their own state have been severely dashed by Washington’s move. Ever since the formation of the United States, it has been American policy to destroy aspirant nations like the internationally-recognized State of Palestine.The first nation destroyed by the United States was the Cherokee Nation, or Tsalagihi Ayeli, which, beginning in 1794, was slowly decimated by forced removals from territory in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, ...
For over 65 years, since the establishment of the State of Israel at the behest of the then American Zionist lobby, its successor has ensured that billions of US dollars in aid, grants, loans, guarantees, tax exemptions and ‘deals’ are funneled to the Israeli Treasury Secretary in order to give the satellite state an unprecedented economic and military advantage over any other country in the Middle East or Europe. All paid for by an unwitting American taxpayer.The total amount is sufficiently mind-boggling that it is impossible to quantify. The current monies and ‘aid’ that flow openly from the US to ...
Brzezinski’s death at 89 years of age has generated a load of propaganda and disinformation, all of which serves one interest group or another or the myths that people find satisfying. I am not an expert on Brzezinski, and this is not an apology for him. He was a Cold Warrior, as essentially was everyone in Washington during the Soviet era.For 12 years Brzezinski was my colleague at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I occupied the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy. When I was elected to that chair, CSIS was a part of Georgetown University. ...
In the sea of misinformation sloshing around the Western media during the Yugoslav civil wars, Serbs fared the worst. As a rule, they were accused even of atrocities that never happened, or were committed by others. The real truth would usually emerge several years later, from the mouths of international officials who at the time held important and responsible positions.American press and electronic media have “discovered” that the Serbs weren’t the “bad guys” to the extent the American reporters from the Balkans made them out to be. Even though Jack Kelly, a correspondent of USA Today, resigned years ago because ...
The magazine is covering the research gaps uncovered by global Western hoax mainstream media platforms and academic teaching & research institutions.
This is an alternative information & academic research digest platform with the purpose to offer an alternative “another side of the truth”.
The magazine is independent, private, and free of any influence by any institution, organization, government, or pressure group. URL: www.global-politics.eu
In order not to get lost in empty declarations about the “European future of the region”, we should rethink the relationship between the Western Balkans and the European Union – and instead of repeating like parrots the phrases about the “imminent” full membership of the Western Balkans in the EU; for which there are less and less chances for it to happen in the foreseeable future (both due to the process in the EU itself and wider global processes) – it is necessary to devise new and creative solutions for the future. One such solution could be to define some kind of future privileged partnership for non-EU countries of the Western Balkans in relations with the EU, if full membership proves to be an unrealistic option in the short term. This is already enabled by the so-called the new methodology of the Western Balkans’ accession to the EU, proposed by French President Macron, which allows certain sectors of the state and society – in line with possible successful reform moves – to be fully integrated into the EU system, even if there is no explicit full membership.
