Monday 28 June 2010

Balkans - 2010

I read a couple days ago that Balkan states launch 'mini-Schengen'. Euobserver.com revealed that
'Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo have created a passport-free zone, called a "mini-Schengen" by Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu, in order to show their readines to join the EU's borderless, so-called Schengen area. Macedonia and Montenegro began EU visa-free travel last year'.

I think from Brussels perspectives Balkans are still far away. 2010 was a year of eurozone crisis and Greece was high on the agenda. So we tend to overlook what is happening in the former Ottoman empire. You ask why I bring back this old history? Let me just remind you that until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 most of Balkans including Greece were under the rule of Ottomans (if I read the maps correctly Montenegro stayed independant). Currently in Balkans we have several small states like the ones that joined the passport-free zone which are in the shadow of a somewhat bigger Serbia. And 15 years after the Dayton agreement we have an unresolved issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina...

The elephant in the room is the potential for creating a bigger Albanian state: joining Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia. But I am really not an expert on this so maybe I go back to watch the Flemish national movement and see what comes out in my neighbourhood.

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