PUBLICATION: Research report
Friends or Foes? External Actors and the EU’s Western Balkans Policy
This publication assesses how six external actors - Russia, China, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, and Azerbaijan - engage with the Western Balkans (WB) and how such engagement affects the European Union (EU) enlargement process.
The analysis is anchored in: (1) Desk research on foreign influence and security dynamics in the WB; (2) 27 structured expert interviews conducted in November–December 2025 using a standard questionnaire; and (3) targeted open-source research to verify interview claims and fine-tune the empirical findings where necessary.
The main output of the research is the Threatometer: three comparable tables rating each actor across three criteria: (i) the prominence of the EU in that actor’s policy vis-à-vis the WB; (ii) the degree to which the actor poses a threat to the European Project; and (iii) the degree of overlap between that actor’s policy and the EU’s agenda in the WB.
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DATE: 24.03.2026
TOPICS: BSCP, EU, Foreign Influence, Foreign Policy, In Focus
TYPE: Research report
DOI Number: https://doi.org/10.55042/SOQO9919
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