Re-Engage

The global order no longer favours Western dominance, and Europe’s peripheries have become battlegrounds for competing powers. Yet, the EU’s enlargement policy has not kept pace with this new geopolitical reality

Summary This paper presents the conceptual background and methodological approach designed for the RE-ENGAGE foresight exercise and scenario development process. The foresight and scenarios designed focus specifically on the involvement of key external actors (Russia, China, Türkiye and the United States) in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans in the…

Summary: This study analyses the main interests and modes of engagement of the dominant EU’s actual and potential competitors and other external actors in the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. The paper specifically zooms on four such actors – Russia, China, Türkiye, and the U.S. – and outlines their long-term…

This paper examines the hybrid governance in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Albania, focusing on their capacity for democratic resilience and the effectiveness of EU democracy promotion, with attention to electoral systems, political parties, judicial independence, and media freedom.

This background paper delivers a comprehensive understanding of the post- independence trajectories of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine toward the consolidation of hybridity, understood as a distinct type of regime that oscillates between democratic and authoritarian practices of power.

This paper examines the policies and instruments the EU has deployed to promote democracy in the Western Balkans and the eastern neighbourhood

This paper explores the relationship between theory and method and serves as a basis for further studies in the project's focus areas the Western Balkans and the Eastern Neighbourhood.

This paper conducts the initial conceptualisation of the key analytical concepts of democracy, trust, hybrid regimes, and resilience.

Over the past decade, the global geopolitical context has changed significantly. We have seen a power shift with a more assertive Russia and China and the rise of a more complex and competitive multi-polar system.

A new power audit of member states’ positions on EU enlargement shows broad agreement that it is a geopolitical necessity, but major disagreements about how to prepare the EU.