EUROPEAN ILUSION OF THE BALKANS
Abstract
Just as in the 19th century, the specter of communism was circulating in Europe and the world, so in the 20th and 21st centuries, the specter of the European Union is circulating in Europe and the world. The idea of Europe, so imposed on the countries of the Balkans, and the necessity that it is necessary to follow the trends of civilization, democratize national states, establish freedom and equality of citizens, respect the diversity of national cultures and traditions, “melts” and disappears due to the imposition of market culture and the introduction of a kind of financial dictatorship.
The EU expansion and accession project in its very essence boils down to the structural destruction of nation states as independent political centers and the integral depoliticization of the economy. The Maastricht Treaty laid the foundation for the implementation of privatization, the reduction of public spending, the accelerated increase in unemployment and the ever-increasing reduction of social rights. Transnational financial institutions and multinational companies dictate, within legal frameworks, the rules, imposing them on states that are less and less sovereign and more and more territories. A form of debt slavery is established through the European Balance Pact, and the monetary sovereignty of the national state disappears.
Europe is falling more and more into an identity crisis because its inviolable privilege is no longer the praised and proclaimed model of parliamentary democracy and market economy, nor its primacy in education, science and art. The greatest ethical paradox of today’s civilization is connected with the crisis of identity: the conditions for human happiness today are greater than before, but people today are less and less truly happy and free, and more and more afraid. The process of Europeanization has shown that the Enlightenment technocratic faith in the possibility of boundless linear progress has been seriously undermined because we are faced with growth limits in the economy and industry, but also in other 18 fields of social development that threatened technocratic plans and projects.
Precisely because of the process of Europeanization, which was most often called the neutral name of modernization, and in today’s final phase the impersonal name globalization is increasingly used, it became clear that today the European world has reached the ultimate distance from its Greek source because this world has nothing specifically European, nor standards of morality and common values.
Will the peoples of this area survive where the policy of complete exploitation of all forms of social life with a parallel process of deliberate “dumbing down” is being implemented? The peoples of the Balkans will become collateral victims of this absolute freedom of the market and the absolute freedom of employers to impose their conditions on workers.
In her European impressions of the Balkans, the author in a very precise and professional way, with clear scientific argumentation, referring to a large number of scientific findings in the world, opens up many questions, such as identity, colonization, modernization and globalization, hidden, more or less successfully, from the Balkan reality. and placed in the field of European illusions.
Namely, all the Balkan states that arose on the ruins of the Balkan Wall have declared the Euro-Atlantic integrative process as their strategic goal. That ambition is already a reality for some of them, others are still on that path. However, the author emphasizes, these are largely illusions.
The author systematically and very clearly and precisely points out the basic problems and different approaches to this topic, and critically analyzes the relationship of the EU towards the Balkans, but also the relationship of the Balkan states themselves, which are still outside the European integration reality, towards the EU accession process.
The freshness of thoughts, the firmness and clarity of the presented views, solid knowledge of the EU matter, and mature civilizational messages about the European path, are great guarantees that the book will arouse the interest of the reading and scientific audience.
