THE WESTERN BALKANS AS A GEOPOLITICAL CHESSBOARD. (English)
In: Vizione, 2021, Heft 36, S. 455-464
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Zugriff:
The term Balkans is a geographical designation for the southeastern peninsula of the European continent. Europe has many regions, of course, and has two other southern peninsulas--the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and the Italian peninsula. But no other region of Europe contains as many different peoples (in the technical sense, "nations") as the Balkans. To understand who the peoples of the Balkans are, one must first know which countries make up the Balkans. The countries that make up the Balkans today include Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, rump Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), and Bosnia Herzegovina (referred to as Bosnia throughout this text). Geographically, "European Turkey," a small region around Istanbul, is located in the Balkans. Some scholars also consider Croatia to be part of the Balkans. Western Balkans is a political neologism coined to refer to Albania and the territory of the former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, since the early 1990s.[e] The region of the Western Balkans, a coinage exclusively used in Pan-European parlance, roughly corresponds to the Dinaric Alps territory. The institutions of the European Union have generally used the term "Western Balkans" to mean the Balkan area that includes countries that are not members of the European Union, while others refer to the geographical aspects.[d] Each of these countries aims to be part of the future enlargement of the European Union and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program CEFTA. Croatia, considered part of the Western Balkans, joined the EU in July 2013. In terms of infrastructure and energy issues, the countries of the Western Balkans are lagging far behind the rest of Europe. What is now taking place came as an aftermath of the wars of the 1990s that affected the region either directly (Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina) or indirectly (Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia). Having remained the only country in the region outside the former Yugoslavia, Albania had to struggle with the legacy of Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship. The Western Balkans region is diversified in terms of energy, with most countries, except Albania, producing electricity from coal. But developing mines and coal-fired power plants is not at all welcomed by the European Union due to its strategy for carbon dioxide emissions reduction. Balkans’ attempts to expand their coal-fired power plants are backed by China as the latter spotted a niche for investments, as exemplified by China-funded Tuzla coal-power plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another dominant source of energy, for example in Albania, is hydroelectric power plants. But given that Western Balkan rivers keep drying up while most hydroelectric facilities are planned to be constructed in areas of high natural interest, the European Union is not so keen to bankroll these projects. But fiercest controversy has broken out over expanding gas infrastructure and oil pipelines. Among energy projects that are currently being developed are the Nabucco pipeline (backed by the European Union), the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), initiated by Azerbaijan, and the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline (IAP). Also, it was possible to move the step towards constructing such oil pipeline investments as the Pan-European Oil Pipeline (PEOP) and the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian Oil Pipeline (AMBO), running from Central Asia to the European Union. Among energy projects viewed as competitive towards the ones offered by the European Union is TurkStream, as a replacement for Russia’s South Stream pipeline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Titel: |
THE WESTERN BALKANS AS A GEOPOLITICAL CHESSBOARD. (English)
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | EMINOV, ILHAN |
Zeitschrift: | Vizione, 2021, Heft 36, S. 455-464 |
Veröffentlichung: | 2021 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
ISSN: | 1409-8962 (print) |
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