The Western Balkans in the European Union

In  2014, in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the Federal Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, initiated an intergovernmental process with the countries of the Western Balkans (the so-called Berlin Process).
Its aim is to improve cooperation throughout the region, put “fundamentals first”, and thereby reinvigorate European integration.
The first conference, organised in Berlin, was followed by a second one in Vienna in 2015 and a third one in Paris in 2016.
A fourth conference will be organized in Trieste in July 2017, before the process expectedly ends one year later, in 2018.
In order to encourage a European dialogue amongst think tanks and academic institutions on the Western Balkans and their European perspective, CIFE, CFA, IAI and MIB Trieste School of Management, together with other institutions, has organised a Roundtable in the run-up to the next intergovernmental conference on the Western Balkans hosted by Italy in July 2017.
Hosted by the MIB Trieste School of Management, the Roundtable convened a number of European experts working on EU integration and the Western Balkans to reflect on the challenges bedevilling the EU’s enlargement policy –once deemed the EU’s most successful foreign policy- and the contribution research can make to address these.