The OSCE runs police development units in the western Balkans.

At the EU Western Balkans summit in Thessaloniki in June 2003, all of the EU s member states reiterated their unequivocal support to the European perspective of the Western Balkan countries.

We have had wide experience in providing good offices to the countries of the western Balkans.

Coordinated donor assistance to help countries in the Western Balkans to assess and improve airport security.

Just this past weekend, Bratislava hosted another international conference on development in the western Balkans.

In that regard, Slovakia has in recent years been particularly active in the western Balkans.

The EU bet here is that, on the back of Croatia s accession, the enlargement logjam in the western Balkans will finally be broken.

But the EU has so far failed to prepare the Western Balkans for accession, in line with its leaders promise at their Thessaloniki summit in 2003 to admit the Western Balkan states when they meet the Union s standards.

Kosovo s declaration of independence has put stability in the Western Balkans back on Europe s agenda.

What Romania wishes to see in the Western Balkans is sustainable security and stability, based on democracy, freedom and tolerance.

In his speech at the conference, His Excellency Mr. Eduard Kukan, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic and former Special Envoy of the Secretary General for the Balkans, said, The future of the western Balkans region lies, above all else, in deepening collaboration and building trust .

The enlargement of NATO and the EU has embraced a dozen or so states in Central and Eastern Europe and in the western Balkans.

On the topic today, the best peacebuilding offer we see for the Western Balkans is their inclusion in the mainstream European and Euro Atlantic integration processes.

Only then would genuine reconciliation of the Western Balkans be possible, thus opening the road to lasting stability and prosperity of the whole region within the European mainstream.

Over the last 20 years, the goal of EU membership has proved an invaluable asset for stabilizing, democratizing, and modernizing the western Balkans.

Approximately 150 million people in South eastern Europe the Western Balkans, Ukraine, and Turkey aim at becoming EU citizens.

There are now two options for the region one is a shock integration program that takes all of the Western Balkan states into the EU the other is a journey into the unknown.

The EU must learn from this experience to develop an accession strategy for the Western Balkans, whose development has been delayed by a complex post conflict transition process.

The Return of the Balkan Question

Putin s Balkan Mischief

The Balkan Endgame

The Balkans on Trial

Balkan States

A European Cure for Balkan Depression

Another Balkan High Noon

Exorcising the Last Balkan Ghosts

Third, the Balkans.

Syria s Balkan Tragedy

The Balkans New Normal

Quite simply, the ad hoc policymaking that directed interventions in the Balkans, Somalia, southwest Asia, and the Middle East in the past two decades will not suffice in this new era of limitations.

But the lack of effort on all sides to find a lasting compromise to the dispute over Kosovo s independence threatens to undermine much of the progress made in the Western Balkans towards stability and democracy.

Recognizing the role of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and the stabilization and association process for the western Balkans in assisting the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in its efforts in further promoting democratic and economic reforms and in intensifying regional cooperation,

The prospect of EU membership is at the heart of EU policy in the western Balkans, where we are starting to show (for example in Bosnia Herzegovina) a dangerous disinclination to apply tough conditionality.

As the EU celebrates the accession of Croatia which will undoubtedly provide a short term boost to the reform process throughout the western Balkans it faces a profound choice in its engagement with the region.

The Western Balkans a term used only since 1999 comprises Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia (FYROM), Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo, with a combined population of roughly 22 million.

Europe s Second Chance in the Balkans

Sleepwalking in the Balkans

Institution Building in the Balkans

Indeed, we need to send a strong signal to our neighbors in the Western Balkans that their European perspective is still alive, as reaffirmed by the European Heads of State in 2008.

It has zones of distribution, like Mexico and the Balkans.

These are difficult times for the Balkans.

Indeed, the gravitational pull of the EU s enlargement process has been the most important factor in the reconstitution of economic, political, and civic life in the western Balkans since the end of the post Yugoslav wars of the 1990 s.

The international news station Al Jazeera maintains a sister channel that caters to the Balkan region, Al Jazeera Balkans, broadcasting out of and based in Sarajevo.

Thus, although Serbia s loss of sovereignty over Kosovo will undoubtedly be painful in the short term, the long term gains for the entire Western Balkans region from eventual EU accession are vastly more significant.

In fact, enlargement fatigue has been the dominant feature of EU relations with the western Balkan states and explains why the accession process has been flat lining along a path of frozen negotiations and mutual mistrust toward an increasingly uncertain destination.