ABSTRACT
Looking at the map of Europe, it is apparent the Western Balkan countries are geographically a core region of the continent. Surrounded on all sides by EU member states, it is paradoxical that the region remains outside the Union and that it is in many ways politically far away from it. This is all the more surprising considering that the former Yugoslavia was the most liberal and economically advanced of the Eastern European communist countries in the 1980s, only to turn into the most conflict-ridden part of Europe. The problems began with the Milosevic ascendancy in 1987 and the ensuing imposition of direct rule over Kosovo. While all other issues including the independence of Croatia and Macedonia, the Dayton Agreement over Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the independence of Montenegro came and went, Kosovo still had a problematic relationship with Serbia twenty years later. While Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro were set on a path to EU membership, the resolution of the Kosovo final status issue and the issue of police reform in BiH stood in the way of closer ties between Serbia, BiH, Kosovo and the EU.
