Stockholm – ESI at round table with politicians from the Western Balkans

View of the panel. Photo: ESI

ESI's Kristof Bender attended a round-table conference on the EU crisis and its impact on South East Europe organised by the Swedish Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation. The event took place from 29 November to 1 December in Nynäshamn, south of Stockholm, and brought together politicians from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Sweden. 

Besides the question of the impact of the Euro crisis, the debates addressed concrete obstacles for the countries of the Western Balkans to move ahead on their way towards EU membership and how they can be overcome, including ESI's proposal to overcome the Greek-Macedonian name dispute. Another focus were current (and looming) border disputes between successor states of the former Yugoslavia, an issue whose importance will also be stressed in a forthcoming ESI report on the Slovenian-Croatian border dispute.