The Marked Slowdown in Economic Growth, Integration and de-Orientalization since 2008, especially in the EU’s Balkan “Super-Periphery”

Germany” in order to forestall renewed attempts to “Germanize Europe” (Thomas Mann’s refrain in 1953), has engendered an environment in which small

nations no longer feel much need to “club together” in often uncomfortable unions intended to counter potential threats from powerful neighbours. For example, Europe’s expanding civil order facilitated the Czech-Slovak “velvet

divorce” of 1993, since when Czechs and Slovaks have coexisted much less fractiously than they did as co-occupants of a single state.