On 5 September 2026, Bojana Zorić, Policy Analyst for the Western Balkans and Eastern Neighbourhood, presented the Institute’s Analysis, 'Defence readiness beyond the EU: How enlargement partners underpin European security', on defence readiness and the Western Balkans angle. The session was joined by the Major General Maurizio Fronda, EUFOR Althea Commander, who shared his remarks from an operational perspective.
Three key points were highlighted:
- Military mobility should be understood through operational geography, not only through the formal borders of the EU. Better routes, roads, railways, border crossings and ports in the Western Balkans can strengthen European military mobility overall.
- European defence efforts should make smart use of partners’ capacity where it can address specific industrial or logistical bottlenecks. But this comes with certain conditions: verified capacity, product quality, interoperability, transparent ownership, end-use control, secure supply chains and political reliability.
- Geography creates relevance but reliability depends on political alignment, institutional capacity and regional stability. The Western Balkans’ first contribution to European defence readiness is the stability and predictability of the region itself. If the region cannot manage its own security, it becomes a standing demand on EU and NATO crisis-management capacity.
