28 Mar 2024
A humane and effective policy is urgently needed to reduce irregular migration from Africa across the Mediterranean while saving lives and respecting the right of asylum. A coalition of EU member states should establish joint asylum centres at the EU’s external borders. After fair and quick…
28 Mar 2024
International thinking about Bosnia is marred by clichés: that Bosnian politics is all about ethnicity, that elections in Bosnia change nothing and that Bosnia is uniquely dysfunctional. Clichés are terrible guides to action and have led the EU to demand from Bosnia and Herzegovina a series of…
28 Mar 2024
Corruption is often mentioned as one of the biggest problems in the Balkans. Yet, hard data on its pervasiveness and nature are scarce. In order to successfully address it, we need deeper analysis and less prejudice. The European Commission has developed a sound methodology to assess corruption,…
28 Mar 2024
In August 2020 the World Bank announced a “pause” in the publication of its annual Doing Business rankings because of cases of data manipulation. The currently ongoing “comprehensive review” ordered by the chief economist should be used to address substantial methodological shortcomings identified…
28 Mar 2024
The EU-Turkey Statement from March 2016 drastically reduced the numbers of migrants crossing the Aegean and thereby also the numbers of people drowning. Then it broke down in March 2020. What is needed now is a revised Statement 2.0 that addresses the shortcomings and builds on the successes of the…
28 Mar 2024
North Macedonia has been blocked on its accession path for more than a decade. It is no outlier. All Western Balkan states are stuck. Their accession process resembles a bus without wheels, with North Macedonia discussing conditions for moving up a row of seats inside a vehicle going nowhere. It is…
28 Mar 2024
Today, Serbia and Kosovo stand at the brink of a catastrophe. It is urgent for European powers to act in time and in a way that can pre-empt it. And the EU must acknowledge that a dialogue based on the promise of EU integration cannot work without this promise being credible.
ESI background paper…
28 Mar 2024
The EU should use the accession process more skilfully to slow the erosion of democratic standards in Turkey. To do so the EU needs to define clearly what EU standards are and to spell out clearly how far Turkey is from meeting them. The EU should define red lines that would lead to the end of the…
28 Mar 2024
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has forced Poland to undo some steps in the demolition of judicial independence. But Poland's judiciary is still under siege. No member state of the EU has ever gone as far in subjugating its courts to executive control. EU member states and all parliamentary…