benami196_LUDOVIC MARINAFP via Getty Images_macronbalkansalbania Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images

The Price of Europe’s Expansion Fatigue

The European Union has long orbited around its founding core, especially France and Germany. As the bloc deals with Russia’s war on Ukraine and confronts creeping authoritarianism among member states, it sees no reason to let the Western Balkans into the club.

PRISTINA – The nineteenth-century English historian J.R. Seeley famously said Britain acquired its empire in a “fit of absence of mind.” The same could be said of the post-Cold War European Union. In some ways, the EU’s enlargement beyond its Western European core happened in a fit of distraction after the collapse of the USSR. Now, it is growing weary.

https://prosyn.org/IbqSFtK