Balkan Mini-Schengen: A Well Thought Regional Initiative or a Political Stunt?

By Agon Demjaha Introduction Although countries of the Western Balkans have made full integration into the European Union one of their key strategic priorities, mainly due to bloody wars that followed the disintegration of former Yugoslavia, the process of integration of these countries came with certain delay as compared to the rest of the European post-communist states. While in Central and Eastern Europe, the phases of stabilisation, transition and integration basically followed one another, in the Western Balkans the EU integration was a condition of stabilisation, rather than the other way around. As a result, the EU has in addition…