REFOCUSING THE EUROPEAN UNION ATTENTION ON THE WESTERN BALKANS: THE IMPACT OF THE BERLIN PROCESS

Abstract

The expectations of the Western Balkans (WB) on the EU membership perspective could have been ‘undermined’ with the halt in the EU enlargement process as declared by the former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in 2014. In the meantime, even though the WB countries were part of the EU’s regional approach through the mechanism of Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) working on the implementation of the Acquis Communautaire, the slowing down of the integration process could have economic and political consequences and threaten the regional stability. This paper shows how the Berlin Process (2014) was the proper intergovernmental initiative taken by some EU Member States to keep alive the EU integration perspective of the WB, thus refocusing the EU attention on the challenges the WB was facing on the way towards EU integration.