Davor Vuleti ć The Western Balkans and the Possible Consequences of Lost Expectations: the Cost of Non-accession Davor Vuleti ć* Introduction to‘irrational Balkans’ Half a century ago István Bibó wrote that‘Central and Eastern European nations should be prevented from disturbing Europe by their endless territorial disputes. Stability is a basic need for Europe’(Bibó, 1996: 111). This statement may look too strong and too much under the influence of the end of WW II, but unfortunately the 1990s reaffirmed this thought. At the beginning of 21st century Mr. Romano Prodi, in his capacity of President of the European Commission said: My message is that the stabilisation process in the region has just begun. There are no guarantees that the process won’t be long, get worse or even reverse. It will not take long for the region to become unstable. In order to prevent that, we need to multiply our efforts to consolidate our achievements, but also to support proactively the consolidation of democracy and stability in the Balkans(Kuko, 2006: 113). Unfortunately, consolidations of EU achievements failed. The rejections of the EU Constitution in France and Netherlands were not the reason for the failure; they were just a sign that the EU has a problem with‘deepening’, as well as crisis in solidarity and European identity. After these signs were politically acknowledged and financially calculated, a very pragmatic solution was offered: there would be no further enlargement to the Western Balkans until the consensus in the institutional reforms inside the EU was reached among the current member states. i The EU concerns towards the actual readiness of aspiring countries range from non-satisfactory regional cooperation based on the EU regional approach, insufficient complying with Copenhagen criteria to unsatisfactory implementation of agreed strategies and obligations taken by potential candidates in the Western Balkans. It is arguable if this was only a good excuse, although most of the facts stated in the EC reports on the readiness of the candidate and potential candidate countries for 2006 are true. The causes of the enlargement fatigue are many as well as the consequences on both sides. The solution that the EU found based on these concerns was bad news for the Western Balkan countries, especially those who achieved candidate status and hoped to join in 2010. The possible candidates who still have enormous potential for crisis development were more than disappointed. What is even more important is the fact that if those countries lose the European perspective, they can easily shift back to the old perspectives of territorial disputes and inter-ethnic atrocities, since the political elites will again be able to replace easily one * The essay“The WesternBalkansand the possibleconsequences of kost expectations:The cost of non accession“ is published in„Overcoming the EU crises: EU perspectives after the eastern enlargement“ edited by Attila Agh, for EU Consent Project, TACIS Foundation, Budapest 2007. We are republishing this text with the autorization of Mr. Davor Vuleti ć and Professor Atilla Agh. Foreign Policy Review-godina 3, broj 3 179