East & Southeast Europe

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s progress is stalling, even reversing. High-level diplomatic efforts are under way to pull the country out of its decline. For the U.S. and EU it is time for a co-ordinated and focused policy. The present haphazard pursuit of self-serving goals will lead to nothing but more damage in Bosnia.

NATO did not fail during the Cold War or after: It did safeguard the security to its member states. NATO can be successful in the future, too - provided it focuses on its primary tasks and resists the temptation to "do everything everywhere".

By joining NATO - and, five years later, the European Union - Poland has fulfilled its strategic objectives, directing its internal development towards a state more secure, democratic, and affluent.

Who could have predicted that the subprime crisis, which exploded in mid-2007 in the U.S., would bring a recession to the Western Balkans in 2009? Especially since we knew that the financial sectors in the Balkan economies did not deal at all with toxic assets – those derivatives connected to subprime mortgages.

The EU should readjust its relations with Russia. In this it must bear in mind that Moscow no longer rules out military confrontations as a means of pursuing its interests. Accordingly the EU has to more clearly define its external policies. Should a country like Georgia, which has strategic importance for the West, be left to a Russian sphere of influence?

The uncertainty inherent in the motto for this conference, organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, was clearly shared by the participants on 25th April at the Berlin House of Representatives. At this conference on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), researchers and EU politicians discussed why there has been so little progress towards its objective of creating a “circle of friendly nations”.