Publications

The challenges confronting youth in Southeast Europe have been receiving increased international attention in the past few years. Addressing the evident lack of channels giving young people a say in policy-making, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) commissioned representative surveys canvassing more than 10,000 respondents aged 14 – 29 in ten countries of Southeast Europe in early 2018.

Our first Political Trends & Dynamics issue of 2019 focuses and serves also as the first part of a two-part series examining the linkages between corruption, democratic back-sliding, civil society mobilization and political participation in southeastern Europe. Our interest in these topics — much as with the linkages we are drawing between the respective pillars of these debates — comes from a growing recognition that existing democratic practices and institutions in much of Europe are in the midst of an existential transformation and, very likely, crisis.

After the accession of Croatia into the EU in 2013, six Western Balkans countries were left at Europe’s front door – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegowina, Kosovo, Mazedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. The social democratic argument has to stay focused on championing the combined policies of deepening and widening the EU in order to keep the Western Balkans on the accession path. Social democratic ideas such as solidarity, equality and tolerance must become the cornerstones of a future, reformed European enlargement policy.