Ana Krstinovska, Research Fellow at ELIAMEP’s South East Europe Programme, published a paper in the online magazine IDEES of the Centre for Contemporary Studies, an in-house think tank of the Government of Catalonia. Her paper focuses on the prospects of Chinese influence in the Western Balkan countries after the 2024 European elections.
More specifically, through her paper, Krstinovska explains the reasons why the EU should include the Western Balkans in its policy discussions on China. The reasons she gives are as follows:
1️. It would help the region to understand what is at stake at the European level and how it could support the community it aspires to join.
2️. It would smooth out and accelerate the adoption and implementation of relevant EU acquis in the region, providing the EU with increased geopolitical and geo-economic leverage.
3️. It would inform domestic debates about the Western Balkans’ geopolitical positioning and foster a feeling of partnership with the EU, rather than an asymmetric relationship where one side dictates the conditions and the other can only choose to follow.
4️. It would provide some reassurance to Western Balkan policymakers that they could count on the EU’s commitment to support their countries should they face some pressure from China due to their increased alignment with the EU.
- Ιt would recentre the focus on the importance of EU reforms and alignment as a basis for any relationship with external actors, thus providing the enlargement process with increased credibility.
You can read the paper here.
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