Yugoslavia is Dead - Long Live the Yugosphere

 

Although Yugoslavia is long gone, almost twenty years after most of the political and economic links were smashed between the countries of the former Yugoslavia a large number have now been reconnected. In 2008 the Regional Co-operation Council, RCC, was formed as a successor to the post-war Stability Pact, its member states being the seven post-Yugoslav states (Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo, Macedonia) plus Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Albania and Turkey. The aim of the RCC is to sustain the principle of local ownership and to enhance regional co-operation in the priority areas of economic and social development, infrastructure and energy, justice and home affairs, security co-operation, building human capital and cross-cutting issues and parliamentary co-operation. Ever more economic, social and tactical links are being restored.

 

A Yugosphere has emerged among the lands Yugoslavia once encompassed. It is an area of mostly like minded people with a lot in common who are increasingly coming to co-operate and work together for mutual advantage as much as they can, stimulated by regional (EU) funds which require states to apply together. However, although a homogenization of culture can be discerned, this is not the case for politics. The emergence of a Yugosphere does not contradict the existence of national spheres within it and it thus remains a very fragile construct.

 

In his lecture during A Struggle for Peace, renowned journalist Tim Judah shall elaborate on the future of the Western Balkans, the concept of Yugosphere and its relation with the rest of Europe.

 

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