"This review article focuses on a wide canvas of issues relating to the EU's engagement with western Balkans countries. Putting current policies into the perspective of the recent history of the western Balkans region, the author develops a number of theses about the nature of the EU's engagement including among them the extension of the modernisation agenda and the difficulties that this is causing the EU's own internal capacities. The author cites the destruction of Yugoslavia during the 90s, a process in which a European Community preoccupied with its own economic and monetary union appeared powerless to react, as being key in the problematic development of a foreign and security policy at the EU level, where the EU is still 'between globalisation and fragmentation'. The author explores EU initiatives in the integration of western Balkans states, including the Stability Pact, and concludes that integration offers a difficult challenge to dreams of European unity in which the experience of the US in the application of its foreign policy offers a key lesson as to the likely weighting of the challenges that matter most of all to ordinary people."

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