GEAB 167

This article was edited by Pierre-Alix Pajot, a History-Geography teacher, former intern at the French Embassy in Sarajevo. His work focused initially on the integration of Serbia into the European Union and then on the future of Bosnia Herzegovina as a state and its European future. Further on, he was Editor of the International Journal for one year.

If it was a hot summer in Europe in terms of temperatures, so was it on the political scene in the Balkans. And once again, it was in Kosovo that the temperatures rose the highest, with Serbs and Kosovars fighting each other. Against the backdrop of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, many are tempted to see this as the next hotspot in the West’s proxy war with Russia. If this hypothesis is plausible, it should not be overestimated. On the one hand, Russia remains essentially focused on its eastern war front in the Black Sea, which is far away enough from the Balkans, to be capable of triggering a real confrontation; on the other hand, the EU and NATO, which already have a very comfortable foothold there, have all the cards in hand to strengthen themselves. The real scourge in the Balkans remains social misery and corruption. The latter feeds the former. And since the same causes produce the same effects, it is this line that is the most explosive.