Garčević Participates in Western Balkans Conference 2021
On March 25, 2021, Ambassador Vesko Garčević, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, took part in the Western Balkans Conference 2021. The conference was co-hosted by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade (IFAT).
The focus of this year’s conference was “Membership or selective integration? Realities of the EU–Western Balkans relations.” Garčević participated in a panel about external actors in the Western Balkans and what can be expected from those actors in the near future.
In his remarks, Garčević explained that, currently, Brussels seems to lack an effective policy for countering Chinese or Russian transnationalism. The European Union has neglected Europe’s South-East corner, thereby granting opportunities to other global actors to make strategic gains in the region, at the same time, the prospects for EU membership has become a long shot. As corruption in the Western Balkans persists and rule of law and democratic standards continue to backslide, Garčević said the abilities of China and Russia to flex their muscles in the region will continue to grow, and the possibility of the region joining the EU further declines.
Details on the Western Balkans Conference can be read online.
During his diplomatic career, Ambassador Vesko Garčević dealt with issues pertinent to European security and NATO for almost 14 years. In 2004, he was posted in Vienna to serve as Ambassador to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He had been a Montenegro’s Ambassador to NATO from 2010 until 2014 and served as a Montenegro’s National Coordinator for NATO from 2015 until he joined the faculty at the Pardee School. Learn more about Ambassador Garčević on his faculty profile.