EU Member State-Building in the Western Balkans: (Prolonged) EU-Protectorates or New Model of Sustainable Enlargement? Conclusion

More than 20 years after the violent break-up of Yugoslavia European efforts to create sustainable States in the Western Balkans, as discussed in the papers of this Special Issue, have brought about some progress, but a lot of work remains. This conclusion will draw on some of the themes developed in the previous papers and contrast to what extent EU Member State-Building provides a new framework for enlargement and what the key questions of sustainable expansion of the EU and functional state-building through conditionality will be. It concludes that the EU's current engagement with the Western Balkans faces many problems and obstacles and therefore some reconsideration might be necessary.