Publications

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) is publishing a fact sheet based on ground-breaking reports on the experiences and aspirations of youth in Southeast Europe, presenting youth demands for a decent future.

The 2018/2019 FES survey results confirm that young people in most countries of SEE share what has become an almost universal experience of young people everywhere: they are struggling to find quality jobs. This struggle may have dire consequences for a young person in various aspects of their lives. This political economy insecurity is one of the core elements shaping the attitudes and values of the SEE youth.

Young people’s increasing political and civic disengagement has been a consistent preoccupation of scholars and policy- makers over the past few decades due to its negative implications for the future of democratic citizenship and political systems. This policy paper offers main points on the attitudes of SEE youth on political and civic participation.

The issue of young people’s emigration from South-eastern Europe (SEE) has recently drawn considerable public and scholarly attention. Predominantly fuelled by economic uncertainty at home,

youth emigration has especially picked up the pace during the last ten years in the Western Balkans’ six (WB6) countries.

In February 2019, Macedonia received new name boards on its border crossings, and a new logo on the Government website. The country is now officially known as the Republic of North Macedonia. The process getting to the Prespa Agreement, which resulted in the name change, was wearisome, politically exhausting and at times highly controversial; but ultimately it was a process that proved successful, despite encountering opposition or even hostility on both sides. Could the Prespa Agreement be used as a blueprint for resolving other bilateral disputes in the region?

Critical of the status quo approach to enlargement, Florent Marciacq offers a strategic alternative by proposing “robust solidarity” as a new guiding principle that focuses on the EU’s foundational visions and values. Only with renewed attention to the EU’s founding principle of solidarity, he argues, can the resurfaced debate around “widening vs deepening” of the EU’s reach be overcome.

In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted by scholars and policy-makers to youth in the Western Balkans‘ six (WB6) countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. While young people in these countries are often seen as a possible ray of hope in terms of democratization and Europeanisation, empirical studies tend to paint a rather unfavorable picture in this regard. Youth in the region live under conditions of political economy of insecurity which drives their economic and political behavior.

Any process of political and wider social and political changes strongly depends on the quality of political culture. The failure of the countries of Southeast Europe (often called the Western Balkans) in the last three decades to initiate deep political and societal change that would lead them towards the goal of liberal democracy cannot be explained only by the reference to wars and internal conflicts or external factors due to their the peripheral position in Europe.