PRISTINA – Security has become a defining frame of EU enlargement, shaped by the war in Ukraine, hybrid warfare, and the erosion of rule-of-law structures across parts of the Western Balkans, stated the participants of the panel entitled “Resilient Democracies, Safer Region”, which was held today within the Civil Society & Think Tank Forum (CSF) 2026 in Pristina.
According to the speakers, not only the public institutions, but also the civil society organisations have an important role in security oversight. In addition, it was stressed that the as the EU seeks to strengthen its economic resilience and competitiveness, the Western Balkans countries are increasingly viewed not only as candidates for membership but also as potentially major contributors to that project.
Ana Krstinovska, Executive Director of ESTIMA and Research Fellow of ELIAMEP, stated that “the European Union is the primary support for the democratization in the Western Balkans”, particularly having in mind the malign influence of the authoritarian rivals of the EU.
“Democracy gap in the Western Balkans is often framed as a lack of the reform capacity, but think it can be framed also as a lack of political incentives. The pollical elites have not yet been convinced to do the right things for the citizens”, Krstinovska remarked.
In her opinion, there is always an interplay between democracy and security, and there are striking differences in the foreign policy approach in the countries of the region – for instance, while Kosovo has been aligning with the Common Foreign and Security Policy “very proactively and voluntarily”, Serbia, on the other hand, is balancing between different external actors, including China.
Danilo Kalezić, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Montenegro, the EU alone cannot fix all the pressing issues in this region regarding resilience and security, so we need to motivate the US counterparts to get involved as well.
“There strong influences of Russia, China and Serbia in the Western Balkans, but, nowadays, there is a divergence in these interests”, Kalezić said.
In his opinion, Serbia wants to, at least, “delay the EU integration path of Montenegro”, while Russia “essentially wants to have a replacement for Hungary in the Union, i.e. a Trojan horse, and that is why it is actively bolstering the pollical forces which are not the part of the current government in Montenegro”.
He claimed that while Russia acts as a political disruptor, China acts as an economic anchor in the Western Balkans. This synergy allows non-democratic regimes, such as Serbian to resist Western democratization pressures without facing total isolation.
According to Kalezić, “Serbia is constant exporter of instability into the region”, and “we will not see a significant change in its foreign policy, whatever the outcome of the upcoming elections will be”.
