Garcevic Publishes Op-Ed on EU-Balkans Relations
Ambassador Vesko Garcevic Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent op-ed on the future of European Union-Western Balkans relations.
Garcevic’s op-ed, entitled “The EU and the Western Balkans – Partnership Without Passion” was published in Remarker on June 20, 2019.
From the text of the article:
The European elections will not make the perspective of the Western Balkans brighter. The rise of the extreme right, populist and Eurosceptics (they don’t always belong to the same political block) in Europe will only make things more difficult and uncertain. Due to their internal challenges, Brussels will scapegoat the EU enlargement as easy as the Balkans’ leaders will sacrifice democratic reforms…
… The recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s Macron with Western Balkans’ leaders confirms this worrying impression. The meeting was a cold shower for regional politicians and civil society alike. Although the German and French leaders expressed their interests for the developments in the region to take a positive turn, the meeting neither revived the clinically dead dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia nor encouraged hopes of EU membership in the foreseeable future.
During his diplomatic career, Amb. Vesko Garcevic dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School.