Do citizens see membership in the European Union as a salvation from dysfunctional domestic institutions? More than 2,000 citizens of the Western Balkans participated in the Balkan Barometer 2025 survey. Judging by the results, they are more optimistic about what regional political leaders do and offer.
We increasingly hear in the public space in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but in the region, that trust in the European Union, but also in the successful completion of the European path itself, is falling. But the numbers say otherwise. And nothing is accidental, there are concrete reasons.
“After several years of stagnation, support for EU integration in the region has jumped by 10 percent – from 54 to 64 percent. There are reasons for that. It did not happen that people just woke up and decided to be more optimistic. This is because partner organizations and the European Union itself have delivered concrete results when it comes to regional cooperation. There is also the Growth Plan, the fact that Montenegro and Albania have made significant progress on the European path,” said Amer Kapetanović, Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council.
If we take into account the internal political situation that leads everywhere before the European Union. 52% of our country’s citizens believe that regional cooperation can improve the economic situation, only nine percent are optimistic that Bosnia and Herzegovina can enter the European Union by 2030, and we are the country in the region most affected by the outflow of labor. However, 59 percent of Bosnians and Herzegovina want us to become part of the European Union.
“The data shows – when you go deeper into the structure – that in the Republika Srpska trust in the European Union is still below average, in the Federation it is much higher. We can also assume why this is so, but the reasons for the increase in this sentiment are that you have the Growth Plan, you have a situation in regional cooperation that people feel, you see that the EU is omnipresent, provides some incentives and support. If this trend grows proportionally to the growth of the European process in some countries, proportionally to the implementation of the Growth Plan, then we can establish a causal relationship and say that’s it,” Kapetanović points out.
Albania leads all the rankings of the research, as it is the country in the region closest to EU membership, followed by Kosovo with high levels of trust. Serbia, on the other hand, is at the bottom, as there has been no consensus in Brussels for four years to open a third cluster. Montenegro is also on the rise, with 39 percent of citizens convinced that it will become a member of the European family by 2035. Only 15 percent of Macedonians consider this plan feasible, since member state Bulgaria vetoed the condition of changing the Macedonian language to Bulgarian, which is insurmountable for Macedonians.
The gap between Bosnian leaders regarding the decisions that lead us forward on the European path also seems insurmountable. The European Council will give its opinion on the pro-European moves of the Western Balkan countries on Thursday, and apart from Tirana, other centers do not have much reason for optimism, BHRT writes.
