Under the European Commission’s 2018 Western Balkan strategy, candidate countries from the region must resolve bilateral disputes before joining the EU. As it wants to avoid importing conflicts, the EU puts the onus to ensure good neighbourly relations onto the region itself.

With Gazprom pulling out of Ukraine’s transit network of natural gas in 2019, South – Eastern Europe, a region with high import dependency on Russian gas, must prepare itself for a post- 2019 environment that could challenge the stability of the countries’ security of supply. This is particularly the case for Serbia which imports over 80% of its natural gas from Russia.