{"id":35778,"date":"2026-03-24T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/?post_type=publikacija&#038;p=35778"},"modified":"2026-03-24T08:58:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T07:58:52","slug":"friends-or-foes-external-actors-and-the-eu-s-western-balkans-policy","status":"publish","type":"publikacija","link":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/publication\/friends-or-foes-external-actors-and-the-eu-s-western-balkans-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends or Foes? External Actors and the EU\u2019s Western Balkans Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2013December 2025 using a standard questionnaire; and (3) targeted open-source research to verify interview claims and fine-tune the empirical findings where necessary.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s policy vis-\u00e0-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\u2019s policy and the EU\u2019s agenda in the WB.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This publication assesses how six external actors &#8211; Russia, China, T\u00fcrkiye, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, and Azerbaijan &#8211; engage with the Western Balkans (WB) and how such engagement affects the European Union (EU) enlargement process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":35788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7415,8615,8621,8613,8622],"tags":[11530,11531,11389,9416],"vrsta":[11278],"pdfpub":[],"coauthors":[164],"class_list":["post-35778","publikacija","type-publikacija","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bscp","category-eu-en","category-foreign-influence","category-foreign-policy","category-in-focus","tag-eu-enlargement-process","tag-eu-s-western-balkans-policy","tag-foreign-influence","tag-western-balkans","vrsta-research-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/35778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/publikacija"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35778"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/35778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35790,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publikacija\/35778\/revisions\/35790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35778"},{"taxonomy":"vrsta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vrsta?post=35778"},{"taxonomy":"pdfpub","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pdfpub?post=35778"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bezbednost.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=35778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}