What influence does the EU really have over Serbia and Macedonia’s foreign policy?

With the gradual consolidation of European foreign policy structures and the intensification of multi-level interactions in that area, Europeanisation has become a pregnant reality for non-EU Europe in general and Serbia and Macedonia in particular. What Europeanisation is, what it entails and how it proceeds remain yet subject to controversies. The aim of this presentation, which is based on a joint PhD project completed in 2014, is to shed light on the actual influence the EU has exerted on Serbia and Macedonia’s foreign policy over the past fifteen years. It will discuss how Serbia and Macedonia coordinate their diplomatic actions with the EU in the UNGA and OSCE; how they reform their ministry of foreign affairs and how they cope with sensitive issues (Serbia’s Kosovo issue and Macedonia’s naming issue) in a changing context of European integration. The presentation will acknowledge the growing relevance of the EU in foreign policy matters. But it will question its self-proclaimed predominance as well as the significance of its conditionality policy in the area. It will underline the limits and failures of the EU’s transformative power, the importance of national specificities, and call for reframing Europeanisation research at the international / inter-organisational (rather than EU) level.