Stability, democracy, prosperity - the EU integration of the Western Balkans has been linked to ambitious goals. After two decades of accession prospects, however, the balance sheet is sobering. This lecture explores central difficulties and dilemmas facing the EU‘s enlargement policy in South East Europe as well as possible remedies.
The EU is caught in two dilemmas regarding the countries of the Western Balkans, on the one hand, the conflict between stabilisation and support of political transformation and on the other the goals of transformation and geopolitical considerations. Moreover, the EU has to deal with the existing enlargement skepticism of the member states (with regard to political elites and the population), as well as the dispute about the rule of law within the EU, which meanwhile has clear implications for the accession process. These conflicts limit the EU's political scope for actions vis-à-vis the candidate countries. The lecture addresses the national perspectives of the EU member states on the EU enlargement policy.

Theresia Töglhofer is a research fellow for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik e.V. (DGAP). Between 2011 and 2014, she was a program officer in DGAP’s Alfred von Oppenheim Center, where she directed a program that supported think tanks from the Western Balkans. From 2010 to 2011, she worked in the Department for EU Integration at the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in Vienna. Töglhofer earned a master’s degree in international affairs from Sciences Po Paris in 2009. She also studied history, with a specialization in South-East European History, at Graz University in 2010.

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Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil der Reihe der Feierlichkeiten zum 20jährigen Jubiläum der Andrássy Universität Budapest.