Strategy for the Western Balkans

[1] In 1999, the European Union launched the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) to strengthen its role in the region and provide long-term support for the reconstruction and development of countries in the wake of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

[2] Since then, an annual EU-Balkans summit has been organized; the first was held in Zagreb in November 2000, and in 2003 the Thessaloniki European Council reaffirmed that all SAP countries were potential candidates for membership.

[4] To support and reinvigorate the candidate countries' efforts to meet the accession criteria, the European Commission, through its President, adopted a strategy at the end of 2017 focusing on priorities and areas for enhanced joint cooperation.

[7] Beyond this regional policy, the EU is also committed to working alongside its member states and partners to resolve local issues such as the debate over the name of Macedonia,[8] or the dispute over the delineation of the border between Kosovo and Serbia.

[9] With the redefinition of borders and forced population movements that followed the inter-ethnic conflicts of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, the Western Balkans were sharply divided, and deep-rooted tensions remained.

The Dayton Accords put an end to the war in Bosnia (1995) by separating the country into two distinct regions and creating a federal government managed by a collective tripartite presidency and supervised by an international High Representative.