Publication Series Perspectives Southeast Europe

This issue of Perspectives is dedicated to climate change mitigation in the Western Balkans, because of both the global need to limit global warming but also because mitigating climate change, as the articles show, goes hand in hand with development both in terms of economic growth and in terms of health, wellbeing and societal development. With this context in mind, the articles before you shed light upon some of the commonly overlooked aspects of it but also point to solutions which are good starting points for any future changes in how we think of energy, development, and public good more broadly

The international community, especially the EU and its member states, seems clumsy and even over-burdened in light of the recklessly proceeding patronage networks in the Balkans: The approach of local ownership which has been propagated for a long while is dangerously ignoring the real balance of power in those countries. How could citizens deal with very diffuse networks, if there are no intact correctives, no free, no independent justice?

Approaches to understanding the meaning of accession to the European Union vary significantly among the post-Yugoslav countries. For some the process has been an important driving force for changes in their legal and institutional systems.