Vienna – ESI at Western Balkans roundtable at Austrian MFA

Hofburg, Vienna. Photo: Kristof Bender/ESI

On 31 January 2020 ESI's Kristof Bender participated at a Western Balkans Policy Roundtable organised by the Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs and the Centre for Southeast European Studies of the University of Graz. 

Other participants included various think tankers, Florian Bieber of the University of Graz, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko, former High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch, head of the department for South East Europe and EU-Enlargement at the Austrian foreign ministry Klaus Wölfer and other representatives of the Austrian ministries of foreign affairs and defence. The roundtable was held under Chatham House rules. Kristof presented some of ESI's ideas related to reforms of the EU accession process, Bosnia and Herzegovina and relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

• Balkan Insight, Kristof Bender, Gerald Knaus, Adnan Cerimagic, "EU Has Turned Enlargement into a Hamster Wheel", 21 January 2020.
• ESI newsletter, "Hamster in the Wheel – Credibility and EU Balkan policy", 16 January 2020.
• ESI report, "Hamster in the Wheel – Credibility and EU Balkan policy", 15 January 2020.
• ESI newsletter, "Coup de grâce – Delors and squaring the circle – Norway in the Balkans", 25 October 2019.