 Good afternoon. Good afternoon, dear guests, dear friends. Welcome to this panel discussion on the state of democracy in the western Balkans. I am Blerta Hoja, Program Officer within International Ideas Regional Europe Program, and I'm pleased to moderate this panel today. As you know, International Idea analyzes and tracks democracy trends around the globe in some 173 countries through a complex and consolidated thorough methodology on which we will hear more in a few minutes. And today we would like to zoom in into the western Balkans to see where the main trends are for the region and what's coming up next in terms of democratic consolidation. We will do so by hearing from a panel of distinguished experts, which I would like to thank for joining us here today. We will hear from the European Union's perspective on the importance of democracy in the enlargement process. We will hear from my own colleagues, from International Idea. We will hear from my colleagues on the specific findings of the report of the global state of democracy report. And we will also hear from my other colleague, Gentiana, on specific findings focused on the western Balkans. But before I move forward and kick it off with the speakers and opening remarks, I have two practical announcements to make. The first one is that this event will be recorded and then posted online. And secondly, I would strongly encourage all of you to write your questions throughout the session as they come to your mind. Do not wait for the Q&A session because we will be collecting them throughout the session and then I will have the pleasure to ask them to our speakers. Thank you again. And now I'd like to give the floor for opening remarks to Mr. San van de Stak, our director at the Regional Europe Programme at International Idea. Over to you, Sam. Thank you. Thank you very much, Blerta. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this online event on the state of democracy in the western Balkans. Thank you to all speakers and participants from across the region, a great group of people we have with us today. Special thanks to Giulio Venneri of the European Commission and of course thanks to my own colleagues who have helped organize this. Now, I think this is a very timely discussion because at International Idea, where we monitor democracy around the world, we feel that now is the moment to talk about the state of democracy and how to defend it. Because of all kinds of regions, but one important one, of course, is Russia's war on Ukraine, which is raging on European territory. And this has put pressure on democracies all over Europe, but including the western Balkans. The western Balkans are not alone in this, as our global state of democracy report of last year shows, the quality of democracies declining all over the world, including in Europe. And what we're seeing is that democracy is therefore subverted from the outside, but also from within. We see the undermining of elections, we see pervasive corruption, autocratic tendencies emerging. So we need to talk about democracy and no country is immune to these developments. We have to maintain democracy, even where gains have been made, and have to exercise permanent scrutiny of where our democracy stands. So that means we should discuss this, the state of democracy in the western Balkans, and that's what we're aiming to do here today, so that we can strengthen it, preserve the gains and fend off all the threats that may come from either inside or outside. Now, doing this against the backdrop of the EU developments that we saw recently, I think is an important connection. Because we have seen that the EU recently stepped up its positive signals. Of course, there's accession talks that have opened with Albania and North Macedonia. Candidate status was granted to Bosnia and a timeline for Kosovo's visa liberalization was announced just recently. So we are standing at an important moment in time, but we have to translate all those developments that integration discussion into democratic gains. And in her State of the Union address in last September, Commission President von der Leyen said that we live in a watershed moment where we need to strengthen democracies on our continent, including in the western Balkans. But she then said countries must deliver on key democratic consolidation reforms in order to fulfill their membership aspirations. So she clearly linked accession to democratic consolidation. So that's what we hope to discuss today and to help doing over the next months and years. And we're very fortunate to have some of the most authoritative voices from the field who work on the topic of democracy every day of the week, as well as those within the EU that work on these topics. Now, they will reflect on the findings of ideas, global state of democracy report and the way forward for the western Balkans, so that we can protect and invigorate democracy across the region. I wish you good luck. And thank you very much again for being here. Thank you very much, Sam. And without further due, I have the pleasure to give the floor to Dr. Giulio Vayneri, team leader at the rule of law and democracy team at the directorate general for European neighborhood and enlargement negotiations. I should also announce that Dr. Vayneri will have to excuse himself before the end of our event due to impending flight, but we are nevertheless grateful that he could join us at least for this part of the event to give us the view of the importance that the European Union places on democracy in the enlargement process. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Blerta. And thank you, Sam. I will be able to listen and also with great interest to the presentation that Alberto and Gentiana will deliver in a moment. And then, unfortunately, I will have to fly out. So you will excuse me as you mentioned, but I look forward to receiving a good debriefing at our next possible occasion. I think Sam has set the tone very well. So, as usual, I'm making very easy my contribution and our work. And first of all, before we start, let me take the opportunity to commend the recent organization with the Swedish Presidency by International Idea of the very thorough, well-organized event on the presentation of the recommendation on EU External Democracy Action, where we also contributed. I mean, this has been very informative and a lot of food for thoughts has come for that. So really, once again, guys, allow me to open a little parenthesis and congratulate you for that. Now, let's go on the Western Balkans, of course, which is the core focus of our engagement today. Sam said it all. And thank you for quoting the prescient. So I can take one quote off from my skeleton speech. Indeed, we are, I think we have triggered a change of strategic perspective. And the president did it very explicitly at the last statement on the State of the Union. We need to defend democracy. We need to do it in a consistent structure that well-organized way that is not only about promoting democracy abroad. Democracy is attacked everywhere in Europe. There is a clear, I like to call it, rise of autocracy around the globe. This is a fact. You also stated this in your reports. It is a quantitative fact, and it's also a fact that affects qualitatively our life and work and engagement. So we cannot turn a blind eye to this fact. And it's very good that there has been this political push for a switch on the approach on democracy. And indeed, a new package is being prepared for the defense of democracy by the commission. So we are at a very preliminary phases. But this is being put in the pipeline following the Sotheos address by President Wanderlei. Now, I just very briefly want to touch on two points. One highlight of our ongoing work with the Balkans, and Sam gave me already a hook by mentioning the opening of accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia. And the second is a little recap of what were our last messages to the partners countries in the region pertaining to rural and democracy, because I think we have passed very clear messages, including for the first time the way the message on state capture has been presented, and state capture and being stigmatized is quite strong in the last enlargement package, in the communication accompanying the package. So first point, our ongoing work. I think the opening of accession talks and the new enlargement methodology have given us an interesting chance to reinvigorate the work on democracy. Of course, the consolidation of stable democratic institutions was already there since the political criteria has been defined. So it is decades that this is a core part, integral part of the political criteria. But to have a structured engagement on the function of democratic institutions, this is a little bit of a novelty of the new methodology. And we have started to do that in the context of the screening with Albania and North Macedonia, but of course this is something that will affect both potential candidate and candidate countries equally. In the context of the recently opened negotiations, we have focused on free main pillars of action, one being of course the electoral process. This remain core endeavour, so not only the efforts to guarantee free and fair election, protect the health role of the media and the election campaign, but also we are looking at the issue of money politics, so the funding of political parties and election campaigns. The second pillar is the actual functioning of the parliament. So we look at the parliament from an administrative perspective, there is the link here with public administration reform, and then from a political angle. So we are looking at the capacity to ensure transparency, to ensure the highest standards of integrity, and also of the overall effectiveness of the work of parliaments, including in a very specific function that obviously the assemblies retain, which is the oversight of the work of the executive. And the third pillar is civil society, which of course has a lot of cross cutting issues also with the work with chapter 23 under the shop of fundamental rights. But this is something that is essential, is core for the functioning of the democratic institutions. So we have pushed to have a pillar in this on the role of civil society. So we look at both the specific legal framework for NGOs to operate within partner countries, but also for the political context for the enabling environment. So we look also at the environmental elements, which are a bit more important and political. Now, where do we stand with the Balkans? And I said that our approach last year has been quite frank to our partners. First of all, there has been a clear call on the need for more genuine political will for reforms on democracy and the rule of law, which is already very telling, because it's somehow acknowledging that this will has lacked so far. And actually, we notice tendencies somehow to drift away from the main track of good governance, democracy and rule of law reforms. So this was a very explicit call. We have issued a call on state capture, as I mentioned, very clear cut state captures to be eradicated. Governments shall do all that it's in their power to eliminate elements of state capture. So this terminology was very clear in acknowledging that we have noted tendencies of state capture across the region. We have also issued some warning sign when it comes to freedom of expression, media freedom and pluralism, despite some limited progress being noted, these are areas where there is stagnation in some cases even a backsliding. And this is very, very important for the for healthy democracy. I will close it with a message on anti-corruption. On anti-corruption, I think we have a lot of work to do. And anti-corruption, successful anti-corruption is key for successful consolidation of democracy. Corruption is a threat to democracy. Corruption empowers the capturing of the state. Corruption empowers the distortion from the rule of the law to the rule of the money. So this is what we have to fight at the most. And in this context, we have pushed all partners in the region to guarantee meaningful mainstreaming of anti-corruption, which means develop a more strategic approach to anti-corruption in all sectors, in particular those that are the most vulnerable to corruption, which require more attention and targeted measures. So now we are preparing the new assessments, the new report, which will be issued in the fall. And this is where we start from. So a lot of work, a lot of challenges, but we look forward to keep the debate ongoing also with partners like you, which allow us to calibrate our vision and effort in the best possible way. Thank you very much for the opportunity again. And the floor goes back to you, Blažda. Thank you very much, Giulio. Thank you, Sam. And thanks, Giulio. I'll make sure to convey your congratulations to the broader team of colleagues who organized last week event. But really, thank you. It's a pleasure to cooperate. And I think with what you've said, both of you, you have already set the ground. You have mentioned briefly all items in which, which represent the directions in which we were hoping to take this conversation. And so I will now move on to give the floor to my colleague, Alberto Fernández Hippaja, Senior Program Officer at International Idea to zoom in into some of the main findings of the Global State of Democracy Report 2022. Over to you, Alberto. Thank you. Thank you, Blažda. Thank you, Sam and Giulio for setting the stage for what I'm going to present now. I'm going to share my screen. I hope technology is working. I want to present briefly our Global State of Democracy Report 2022 with the title, Forging Social Contracts in a Time of Discontent, focusing both on global findings and then zooming in a little bit more on Europe findings. And then my colleague, Genta, will zoom even further into Western Balkan findings. Just as an introduction, we're not going to discuss here what democracy is, but I want you to understand how International Idea measures and understands democracy. So we consider democracy to be defined at the minimum as popular control over public decision making and equality between citizens in exercising that control. That's a very minimalistic definition, but we unpack that definition into five attributes, representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government, in personal administration, and participatory engagement. That gives us five, let's say, pillars of democracy that then we can unpack in more concrete elements that make up these elements. And with that, what we get is not a number. What we get is a complex picture of democracy. So usually that might look like this one. So you don't get one number. You get a complex vision where you can understand where the weaknesses and the strengths and things that are improving and not improving in a given democracy are. With that understanding, we analyze every year the data that we have. And last year, the analysis of the data brought us four main conclusions at the global level. The first one is that democracy is in retreat around the world. Countries that are moving towards authoritarianism, meaning they're either becoming hybrid regimes or becoming authoritarian regimes, keep being more common. The countries that are actually moving to democracy. That wasn't the case in the 90s. There was more countries becoming democracies, so more autocracies transitioning towards hybridity and further towards democracy. That's not the case anymore. The world keeps adding new hybrid and authoritarian regimes. But not only that, it is also the case that the quality of the existing democracies is in decline. Even the countries that do not abandon the club of democracies, they have worse quality of democracy. We measure that by erosion. It's a statistical way of measuring things, but what we detect is that at least one factor, one of the elements that make up a democracy, it's suffering a considerable, notable decrease. Some countries have one or two, the majority of these 52 democracies have one or two elements that are not improving, that are actually declining. But some other countries have a large number of elements that are actually in decline. Some of them are what we define as backsliding. They have serious issues of erosion that come actually driven usually by the central government. The other side of the coin of this issue is that democratic growth has to stall. In 2011, around 60% of the countries in the world were democracies. That number remains basically the same. It means we are not adding more democracies. Democracy is not becoming more used as a political system. If we zoom in a little bit more into each of the attributes, we also see that the average world improvement of attributes that we can trace back to the 80s all the way to around the year 2010 has a stall. On average, the world is not becoming better at the key aspects of democracy. It's not having better like more representative governments, it's not having better impartial administrations. The world, democracy quality and democracy growth has to stall. That probably is partly a consequence partly the reason why there is an increasing attractiveness for people of autocratic leadership. We have seen the world value service shows how there is an increased number of people that have a fairly good or very good opinion of autocratic leadership. So not only democracies are losing quality, it's also they're losing Democrats, which is probably even more worrisome. There are some signs of hope. I won't just know three here, very briefly, the Gambia, the Dominican Republic and Moldova, three completely different countries and three completely different economic situations. But there are signs of hope. The Gambia has been on a transition in the last years. The Dominican Republic, although it has remained a democracy for many years, it has constantly improved all the aspects of democracy. Moldova has done a remarkable trip towards improving the quality of democracy in the country. So there are signs of hope and there are signs of ways that countries can improve their democracies. This is the general global picture. Let me zoom in a little bit more on the European picture. And it serves a lot of the characteristics. Democracy remains the main form of the main form of government in Europe. Only 89% of the countries in Europe are democracies and that's impressive. Not all their region is democratic. But performance is stagnant. There is no more high-performing democracies. We see a slight growth of authoritarian regimes. This is the case of Russia having become an authoritarian regime in the last iteration of the data. So what we see is that even if democracy remains the main form of government, it's stagnant. 43% of democracies in Europe have suffered erosion. So there are also signs like more than half of democracies are actually losing quality. And two countries, Poland and Hungary are backsliding. What does it mean? It means that today almost half of the Europeans live in an eroding democracy. So if we take all the population of Europe, 49% of people live in eroding democracy. A democracy that's put it this way, that used to be better. A further 30% live in non-democracies. So they don't even live in a democracy. And the lucky 21% that lives in a democracy that is not eroding. So it's just 21% of Europeans live in a democracy that is not eroding. That it's at least remained as good as it used to be a few years ago. One of them, if we want to highlight one aspect that is all over Europe suffering a lot of declines is media integrity. And as you can see in this graph, the number of countries that are declining in media integrity keeps raising around from 2005, 2010, which is when social media started to become really relevant in our communications. We will delve forever on this topic. But it's just an example of how declines affect countries all over Europe. Non-democratic regimes are becoming more consolidated. This is a picture of how Belarus has become less democratic of, I mean, it was already an authoritarian regime, but it's the quality or how close or far from a democracy it was has worsened in recent years. It's consolidating the authoritarianism in the country. One of the consequences of democratic stagnation and of the loss of quality and the holy crisis in which we live today, the cost of living crisis is, for instance, voter turnout. We see that most countries have negative voter turnout. People turn out to vote less and less every year. Just a handful of countries have actually increased voter turnout. And this calls for, this is what the report says, calls for a new social contract. We need to redefine the social contract that democracy offers. Just as an example of things that we can consider is, for instance, the importance of democratic values and institutions seen as a barrier to Russian irredentism and neocolonialism. For instance, in Armenia, in the Republic of Moldova, or in Ukraine before the Russian invasion. And as I already said, this is the case of Moldova that has seen significant improvement in part as an answer to this irredentism. Let me just take two minutes to present the global state of democracy initiative just so you understand where all our data and information comes. We have four components. The data that we use comes from a democracy tracker that I will introduce now and the GSOD indices, which is our measure, our compilation of measures of all the elements that I presented before of a democracy. The tracker is a tool that tries to, that is tracking events that affect the quality of democracy in 173 countries all over the world. Each event that we consider can affect the potential, potentially the quality of democracy is classified within our framework. And then those with more impact are either as negative or positive. So these events, this is just an example from Vietnam, we get the date, we get a summary, we get as many sources as needed. So this is as impartial as possible. This is not us making up the event. We use the most reputable sources. This is a very intensive work of finding sources. We also classify these, what are aspects of democracy are fundamental. And then we generate these country profiles in which you can see a little bit of a description of the country. You can see the performance of the country in the last, in the indices, basic information about the country, the electoral system, the system of government, the name of the head of state, which human rights treaties have been signed by the country. And then also a summary, the monthly updates, the last updates from the country, what has happened that is relevant for democracy in the last months. And that is also compiling this this box. Below you can check the performance of the country more in general when it comes to democracy. Okay. And yeah. And with that, I would like to thank you again for joining us and give you Berta the floor back. Thank you very much. Berta, thank you very much indeed for this, not always very encouraging yet important global and European findings, which are certainly useful to be able to contextualize and understand better what we're going to look into now. That is the specific findings for the Western Balkans. So over to you, Genta. It's my colleague Genta Gola, Program Officer within the Democracy Assessment Team, that will guide us through some of the main findings for the region. Thank you. Over. Thank you, Berta. Thank you, colleagues for the remarks and for the presentation, Alberto. So today I will try to share with you the main findings of the global state of democracy indices on Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, countries as you know, often referred to as the Western Balkan 6. So the GSOD indices defines three broad regime types. Democracies consisting of low, mid and high performing democracies, as well as hybrid regimes and authoritarian regimes. When it comes to the Western Balkan 6, there are no high performing democracies or authoritarian regimes as you can see in the graph here. However, Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia are mid performing democracies while Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina are weak democracies. Serbia, the region's biggest country, is a hybrid regime, so the only non-democratic country in the Western Balkans. Serbia has been backslided since 2013, became a hybrid regime in 2020 as government control of the media space as well as restrictions on campaigning were consolidated. The country was among the hybrid regimes with the greatest number of sub-attributes registry and five-year democratic declines in 2021, including free political parties, clean elections, civil liberties and effective parliament. Serbia is one of the five non-democracies in Europe, in addition to Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Belarus. However, the majority of people in the Western Balkans, around 61%, lived in a democracy. Montenegro and Kosovo have seen recent overall democratic progress marked by successful elections and an increase in impartial administration. The Western Balkan countries continue to perform under the average of the wider central Europe. And impartial administration, an attribute which consists of two sub-attributes absence of corruption and predictable enforcements of attributes, is the only attribute with low performance in the Western Balkans. And low performers are Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina. And representative government, which is an attribute that includes four sub-attributes, clean elections, inclusive suffrage, free political parties and electoral elected government. And out of all these areas, clean elections has seen bigger changes in the region. Clean elections represent an area of movement, but in divergent directions. Serbia has seen a significant decline, while Kosovo advanced in this area, drawing closer to the average for the central European countries. The fundamental rights attributes consist of the access to justice, civil liberties and social rights and equality sub-attributes. The average score for fundamental rights in the Western Balkans region is on the whole lower than it has been five and even 10 years ago. However, the decline has not been significant. So we can say that fundamental rights have been stagnating at the country level and no countries in the Western Balkans have registered significant changes. It's important to note that Albania has the highest score in the region, performing consistent with central European averages, although it remains mid-range and has shown evidence of stagnation for the past two decades. Basic welfare is a sub-component stem from the fundamental rights attribute that has particularly experienced changes in the region. Compared to 20 years ago, basic welfare has consistently improved in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia. In 2021, the average score for Western Balkans countries in basic welfare was high-performing. Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina are high performers with Montenegro performing above the average for central Europe as well as the average for Europe as a whole. Czechs own government consist of the effective parliament, judicial independence and media integrity sub-attributes. Serbia has declined significantly here, moving from the strongest in the region to the weakest in the span of 10 years. Otherwise, as you can see here, there has been a great deal of stagnation. Media integrity is a Czechs own government sub-attribute, as I mentioned earlier. The only significant changes to the media integrity in the region have been declines. Bosnia-Herzegovina saw a decline in its score compared to five years ago, and Serbia saw a decline compared to 10 years ago. North Macedonia and in the short term, Kosovo have shown a positive trajectory. And impartial administration, as I mentioned earlier, consists of absence of corruption and predictable enforcement sub-attributes. And impartial administration is one of the most critical areas for the region, as most of you know. We can observe greater variance in impartial administration scores in 2021 compared to five and 10 years ago, suggesting that countries are moving further apart in this area. While Kosovo and North Macedonia, as we can see here, are breaking a way to be comfortably mid-range, Serbia has moved into the low-performing category, and Bosnia-Herzegovina continues on a downward trajectory. However, this trend has been happening gradually, and the lack of significant changes signals stagnation, which is concerning, as impartial administration is the only attribute with low performers. Although it is still mid-performing, Kosovo registered a significant increase compared to 2016 and 2011, becoming the strongest in the region in this attribute. In 2021, Kosovo performed above the average for central Europe. These have been the biggest and most important changes related to Western Balkans state of democracy, which I hope we can discuss in more detail with our distinguished panelists and the audience. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Gentiana. Again, thank you, Alberto, a lot of food for thought, so I think we are ready to move into the core of this event today, the panel discussion with the distinguished guests that I have the pleasure to to announce. We have the company of Ms. Alexandra Tomanic, Executive Director for the European Fund for the Balkans, Mr. Demus Shasha, Executive Director for the European Policy Institute of Kosovo, Mr. Giorgio Wurmo, Program Director at the Institute for Democracy and Mediation in Tirana, Albania, as well as Dr. Simunita Kacharska, Director of the European Policy Institute in North Macedonia. I, as I said, a lot of data, a lot of food for thought and we welcome very much your comments. Perhaps I can start with the first question regarding the fact that we heard still in good news most of the citizens of the EU of the Western Balkans still live in a democracy. That's certainly a good news. However, as Genta mentioned, we noticed significant stagnation in key areas of democracy, such as fundamental rights and checks on government. So my question to you would be how do the GSOD findings resonate with what you observe in the field across the region in your daily work and which issues do you assess as most urgent to be addressed? Perhaps I can pose the question first to Ms. Tomanic. Thank you. Well, hello from Belgrade. Hello from the capital of the one of the five non-democracies in Europe. So we have seen the graph. So I think it's really, although we live that since many years, it's really shocking to see the steep decline. We definitely do witness everything what the report is showing, but we do witness it since many years. And we also do speak about it for many years. And there I want to make the bridge to something that has been mentioned earlier. Sam mentioned in his introductions the link that Commission President Funderland made with accession and democracy. Well, I would like to remember all of us that Ms. Funderland was in the Balkans last year and the year before, and that her statements were shocking, and that's diplomatic wording when I say shocking. She was here in Serbia where she was phrasing publicly the tremendous reform efforts and fundamentals and so on. So basically either being terribly briefed or having another agenda, but these kind of statements by high-level EU officials coming to the region make it very difficult for civil society to follow up, to work or to be critical because when we are critical decision-makers point to Ms. Funderland or to the former German Chancellor. And if they are happy, who are we to not be happy? And I see Mr. Vinneri left, but he said something and I wrote that down that the EU will ask that governments should do everything to eradicate state capture and I'm a bit confused after this statement and it's the pity that he left because it's actually the governments that have captured the state so I'm not sure how they will un-capture them only because the EU is asking them to do this favor. And the state capture was mentioned already in 2018 in the Commission Papers for the first time and for five long years absolutely nothing has happened as a follow-up. Quite the contrary, on the ground we see that state capture has increased, that democracy decline has increased, so nobody can say they didn't know or were not aware. We in Serbia definitely face as I said, but we see it throughout the region, voter turnout was mentioned, we see more and more people completely disengaging from the water process, we are already happy when it's about 50 percent. So this is a big problem and I think this is also a big question for us from civil society, how can we reach out to citizens, how can we leave our bubble we are in and where we talk to, where we preach to the converted, we are the ones who have to make the reach out to citizens because nobody else will. Obviously governments that have captured the states have no interest in actually creating citizens, they definitely prefer to speak about people. They are the big daddy who is taking care of all of us miners who don't know and shouldn't know better. We also see that in some of the regional and for the regional crucial processes like for example the open Balkans which remains a mystery box where you don't know what's actually happening or in the cause of a Serbia dialogue where we try to make a puzzle and a mosaic out of different media leakages. So it's absolutely no transparency from that side, so I think that there is a lot of room to change our approach and to not end on a too pessimistic part. We have across the region really a lot of citizens uprisings and various local initiatives and movements and I think that there is the energy we are all looking for and that these people need to be supported with knowledge, with expertise, with advice and of course also with funds because this is something that is already boiling and is there and definitely should be used. Thank you. Thank you. Perhaps I can ask Dr. Kaczarska if she would have any comment on the most pressing issues for the region. Thank you. Good afternoon from Skopje as well. I think if we want to, Alexandra, I ended with the good news. I think the starting point of the good news is that actually according to your approach the region most of us actually live in a democracy, which is not something that you're usually told. I mean it kind of also stands out in comparison to other indices. I mean just last week I think we had the Economist Intelligence Unit coming out and yeah we are either weak, fallible and so on or we are usually bottled up in the hybrid definition. So I think that's probably something that kind of stood with me as a good point. But on a more serious note I think one of the key things that do stand out with me is your assessment of the fundamental rights aspect because this is the one that was mentioned by Gentiana as one of the weakest points in the region and thank you for the presentation very much it was very very valuable. I wanted to start with that one because I think this is an aspect that has been neglected more systematically over time now. I see that Albania was the best performer on this if I remember well, which is something that maybe you can comment on. But I see this as a result this really resonates with what we do. It resonates with the weakening of the democracy consensus overall on an international level. It resonates also I think for us it reflects also the very much the focus on the EU accession process which in itself in my view and from our research actually does not deal properly with fundamental rights because the EU relies mostly on international instruments beyond the charter itself and we are experiencing for the last decade if not more the weakening of all of this international covenants on many of the on human rights topics which is actually including such as the UN, the Council of Europe for us and so on which are actually the homes for protecting fundamental rights. I mean you don't hear that much about these instruments in the region due to this focus on especially on the union whose and the union itself does not have a strong side, a strong element of this component which is something that we can come back to later about whether there are venues for improvement. But I think that this is one of the core aspects for me which also reflects the overall gaps in the functioning of the system because fundamental rights at the end of the day depend on a functioning judiciary on impartial administration they depend on all of these pillars which are weak which have been assessed as weak despite the fact that we have been categorized as democracies. The other big aspect that maybe the colleagues that I did not manage to see the post 2020 assessment when we talk about the fundamental rights because we've all been experienced on a global level a big retrenchment in this aspect in the post COVID circumstances with a focus on violations of fundamental rights of vulnerable groups and this is something that is likely to be even exacerbated in societies such as ours which are very much unequal and tend to provide very weak protection. The last I think that there is a light possibly at the end of the tunnel because fundamental actually on fundamental rights there are a lot of instruments and here the capacity of civil society is actually very strong but we need to draw upon that that capacity and I don't think we are we are still there. I think I'll end at this point for this first round and thank you for the question. Thank you. Thank you very much Dr. Kaczarska for drawing these important links that all lead eventually to fundamental rights. I should add we at the international idea have closely monitored the respect of human rights during the COVID pandemic for which we have a whole set of separate detail tracking and indeed it resonates with much of what you said as regards the restrictions and the impact that the pandemic have had with the risk of persistence in the region beyond the pandemic but thank you very much. I'd like maybe to give the floor to Gergis since he was mentioned during the Dr. Kaczarska's presentation. Gergis, if you have any comment to add on the pressing issues for the region or Albania. Thank you and let me start with congratulations to Idea for the report. In the past few days I've read very carefully the reports that you shared with us and a couple of questions have been in my mind constantly. Some of the things that are bothering me and I believe many others in the Western Balkans my colleagues Alexandra and Simonida touched upon really but then I was also triggered by the European Commission representative take at the beginning and it's really a pity that he's not present to follow on the debate. Look we all know lack of democracy kills and we see that with Russia today in Ukraine we see that in many countries but here's the thing also flawed democracies or semi-consolidated democracies kill. The difference is that the semi-consolidated democracies kill over longer period of time but they also do. They don't do it through guns like Putin but they do it via pollution. They do it via breach of food safety standards. They do it via lack of construction or construction building safety standards. So to me that's equally concerning. So maybe in some countries in the region as you said people live in democracy and not in a regime but the question is what kind of democracy? It's not a fully fleshed democracy certainly. It's not a sustainable pace of democratization and one of the most striking findings again not that we didn't know but still it's worth repeating is not only the fact that generally the democracies are in decline but so is the number of democrats as you said at the beginning. So the number of people who believe in democracy, the number of people who put their hopes in democracy, in democratic institutions, in democratic processes and I think that's the most concerning finding that I take from this study. Some of the issues that need urgently to be addressed for the region we all know. It's corruption, it's state capture, it's media capture, it's shrinking civic space, it's the lack of hope among people and youngsters living the region, lack of public trust in institutions in processes. This as regards internal factors, external factors are also important. So some of the issues that I think it's important relate to the EU because the EU is the main let's say strategic objective of many countries in the region. I'm not saying of all the countries in the region because we know the data of the polls but still even formally we can say that it's a strategic objective from all sides. So in this sense we need an urgent issue I would say is also more clarity about the EU enlargement or EU integration or EU accession, call it whatever because we've seen many versions of what we should hope from the EU and one very small comment on the EU enlargement methodology. There's been a lot of talk about revising it, reviving it, restructuring it, I don't know what. To me the core question is not how we monitor the countries but what the EU does with the findings of the monitoring of the countries. So precisely what Alexandra said at the beginning, it's not that the 2016 version of the monitoring methodology of the European Union, of the European Commission couldn't find the traces of state capture. The difference is what did they do with those findings and with those traces and we certainly didn't appreciate much any EU officials coming to our countries ignoring certain very strong pledges for democracy from people outside the state and the government and instead of that praising governments for some kind of progress you know just a form to encourage them to keep up with good work. I mean I can't accept that. It's been really too long that we see those kind of visits and we really had enough. Okay, I think I'll stop here. One last point, security loopholes in the region. These are also important issues that take much more importance given the context with Russian aggression and other actors. So Kosovo recognition, Bosnia constant institutional crisis, the case of North Macedonia being blocked for you know not so principled reasons. These are all issues that don't affect simply a process but will affect democracy in this country, in these countries. Thank you. Thank you very much GERG. Perhaps Mr. Shasha will emphasize or I have a chance to mention it. I believe well the new revised methodology of the EU certainly is still being implemented and so we'll see hopefully it will add to the EU's leverage but I believe one of the novelties is that's the reversibility of the process which should in principle at least serve as a you know additional leverage for or warning for the countries that do not stick to the democratic reform process but again it's early. Perhaps Mr. Shasha did you have a comment on how the findings of the report resonate and the pressing issues in the region? Can you hear me? I think so. Yes, yes, yes we can. It's a pleasure to join you today and thank you for your kind invitation and I join congratulations on your latest your latest report which is a very fitting very good addition to a number of credible international reports of Western Balkans and in particular and in particular I like your very clear and crisp infographics that beautifully summarized your findings since in particular in our line of work we often fall into this trap of overly complicating our technical reports and research so chapeau on all the work done on your latest report. So I'll try to keep my interventions short since our panel as you have seen is packed with immense experience and expertise and I look forward to hearing not only colleagues' insights but also participants' participant thoughts and questions. I would like to organize my remarks along two themes if you will. So first I'd like to make few more general points with regard to state of democracy around the world and then zoom in into our region and see what are key developments that we have been witnessing in the recent years and that yet you have also captured and presented in your report. So my first point is more general. I would argue that since the last major global political development respectively fall of communism and fall of iron curtain and disintegration of Soviet Union at the end of 80s beginning of 90s. Democracy was understood and perceived as an inevitable destiny of our civilization. We kind of thought that this is the end of history to use a popular book title. Now what that kind of thinking did is that it set our societies on autopilot as everything is predetermined and democracy surely, progress, human rights, capitalism, all these things will surely be the only possible outcome. We as humans have lowered our guards and in the meantime malign dark forces were recognizing and exploiting democracy's deficiencies and they were setting ground for war against democracy. Now all of this happened to borrow from Hemingway gradually and then suddenly. So from Hungary to China and from Russia to US, axes of illiberal forces were sharpening and updating their toolkit for the assault on democracy all over the world. Now slowly but surely the time came to attack the Capitol Hill to try to bring an illiberal politician at the heads of the country that at its foundation has the motto of liberty and now most lately wage war against a democratic peace loving country on European soil. Now luckily all these attacks have failed at least for now. Therefore their failures should not be confused with democratic victory. They have lost a battle not a war. In countries across the world from US to Europe from China to Brazil, illiberal politicians command vast masses of people and they are working hand in hand to expand their illiberal way of life throughout the world and today's as we are all seeing main battleground for the survival of democracy is in Ukraine. So my first point is that historically speaking we have to draw a lesson, a lesson learned from the fact that we as humans have taken democracy for granted. Illiberals haven't. They worked hard to undermine and defeat democracy. Therefore as it was noted at the beginning we need to do something about it. We need to respond or in the words of historian Timothy Snyder we have to treat democracy as as a verb not as a noun. So democracy is not something that is out there and will survive on its own it will prosper on its own. It requires for each one of us to do something about it. Just like people of Ukraine are doing something about it and just like people of Iran are doing something about it. Now I'll move to my second point and move closer to our region. So overall our region has not been immune of these global trends and battle between autocracy and democracy. Picture is one of of mixed results. On one hand we have seen good progress being made in Kosovo and in North Macedonia while developments in Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro have been concerning. The situation remains more complicated in Albania and overall leaders in the region have recognized in the past few years they have recognized rightly the lack of international political interest and attention for the region. And under such blanket of ignorance they have consolidated their power and installed many of the autocratic traits that we see across the world. So just to take an example in two largest countries of the region so in Serbia and in Albania leaders of the respective countries have refused have refused to let go of power through free and fair elections and they are now in power for more than 10 years. Now to bring that into perspective imagine if today President of the United States is still George W. Bush or President of France is still Nicolas Sarkozy or Prime Minister of Italy is still Enrico Letta. So my point is that this is unimaginable in proper functioning democracy. So in this light in recent years we have seen in the region implementation of clear and persistent autocratic blueprints for the abolishment of all checks and balances on power. This has been done not in a single dramatic act like a coup or something like that but through a series of small little steps that ensured formalistic respect of the letter of the law but utterly undermined the spirit and the intent of the law. Therefore today we in the Western Balkans are in this situation where there is virtually no checks and balances on executive power. There is virtually no investigative journalism and no meaningful opposition in almost all countries of the region and all of this all of this was done under the banner under the banner of stability and under the banner of EU integration. Now to come to come through a specific question and share my view how GSOD findings resonate with daily reality on the ground in the Western Balkans well you mentioned significant stagnation on key democracy attributes such as fundamental rights and checks on governments. Well this resonates very very loudly. Let me take quickly a few examples. Today in two biggest countries of the region so in Serbia and in Albania biggest public investment projects are not being implemented by Western American European companies but by the one and same Middle Eastern company through highly highly dubious public procedures. Now of course the governments will respond that all proper procedures were followed but this is exactly exemplary of the environment where indeed the government might have respected the letter of the law but they have utterly undermined the spirit of the law and since all checks on government powers in Albania and in Serbia have been dismantled or put under the control of the ruling parties there is no room for political opposition to undertake any meaningful political and institutional action to challenge and stop plans of respective governments nor there is virtually any investigative journalism to expose fraudulent public narratives promoted by respective governments since almost all of the media landscape in these two countries are under the control of the ruling parties. You also mentioned fundamental rights. In Serbia today let alone let alone that individual citizens fundamental rights are being violated but fundamental rights of their political representatives are being violated so today in Serbia political opposition and their children even their children are openly and publicly harassed by security apparatus as we have witnessed in the case of Mr. Zdravko Bonoš and Ms. Radat Raikovic and again by strictly following the letter of the law but utterly undermining its spirit. So I will stop here. These are just some initial reflections to offer general impressions about the state of democracy in the region and I look forward to listening to my colleagues and follow up during the time that we have. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Šaša. Before I move to the next question I do just like to remind our kind of audience to list their questions in writing because we will soon be getting to a Q&A session and now to moving to the next question. Well I think it's clear it resonates amongst all of you a certain pessimism on the fact that there is a clear slowdown when it comes to democratic consolidation and in some cases even a democratic backsliding in the region so I guess my next question would be what would need to change in the political or institutional setup to potentially spur to reverse this trend to spur a new wave of democratization if I can put it in these words and are there any positive examples at all in the region of any topic field or country? Thank you. I can maybe invite I don't know I'll start from I'll start again from Mr. Manic just to keep the order. Thank you. Well yeah I mentioned already my first intervention that they are positive examples and they can be found across the region and that are really these local movements and civic initiatives and they're really a regional phenomenon and they don't only bear the potential for democratization because people get together start reading laws start interacting with the local authorities, consult a lawyer I mean that's a basic civic education that provides better effects than any workshop could do because even if they fail to protect their park or their river or whatever they have learned a lot and they become aware and they're there they're they're citizens in the core meaning of this word so I think that there really is a lot of potential but two things about that first I think also it's really important that it's a regional phenomenon because we see in many countries that these people fighting for example environmental things like for the rivers against mini hydropower plants that they overcome also ethnic divisions we have seen that in Kosovo and Sturbs were both Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs have fought for their river so ethnicity wasn't a problem or a topic any longer it was their river and we also see that across Bosnia and this is really hopeful environment is the new topic because our politicians keep us in nation-state building topics of the 19th centuries and citizens themselves are already in the 21st century in really seeing that environmental topics are threatening us all and that our policymaker or political decision makers are absolutely not aware of the of the threats of the present times and and as I said keep us in in history and myths and nationalism so from these regional perspectives we really see that regarding environment there is a lot of things happening regarding public spaces and there we come to corruption so also you see that in Tirana in Belgrade in Scotland there are really people getting together protecting what is left of public spaces decent work is increasingly becoming a joint issue because we always talk about regional economic integration but nobody speaks about the social dimension of it and the fact that we are competing into lowering wages and ending up in in-work poverty increasingly of course that that's depending of sectors but it's a huge issue so I definitely think that that there is potential I'm just afraid that we are running against time here because let me just take Serbia as an example we have seen many protests in the 90s in Serbia the beginning of the 90s there were anti-war protests and in the mid 90s there were protests against Milosevic and his strict local elections and at the end of the 90s there were the final big wave of protests that finally brought him down in between there were massively other protests minor protest ones so we have seen a whole decade of protests which in substance if you look also at your data we see that in 30 years basically nothing has changed we are not fighting the same narratives and policies we are literally fighting the same people by name and surname and this is very depressing so I'm really always very even emotionally touched when I see that people still go out to fight because I see among my generation that many say I've demonstrated a lot I've passed my whole youth outside I don't want my kids to go that way it's not worth it they should find their luck outside of this country so I think we are really running with this democratization from from from the bottom and from from the citizens themselves this is a process that would take time and I'm afraid we don't have this time if you look at the migration numbers that's one big issue I'm really not sure with whom we are going to talk to work or even less to talk to in five okay or let's be optimistic in 10 years so I really think that we have a big issue there we are losing substantially people not only to migration there is the latest data from the European environmental agency stating that in the western Balkans or in the western Balkans six we are losing 30,000 30,000 lives each year only as a direct result of air pollution so we have burning issues and we are discussing abstract concepts or or or or nation state building concepts while we are all dying with having to breathe this toxic and poisoned air so these are the topics where where citizens then come up with themselves often they then come in for a non-existing state and have to deal with issues where the state has withdrawn itself or just doesn't feel responsible although it would be but clearly state state responsibility so yeah on the one hand I see certain uprisings that provide hope but on the other I think that we cannot do it our own that for certain issues to really meet the state which we don't have and the timing issue so overall I wouldn't even say I'm pessimistic I would say I'm I'm I'm realistic unfortunately but reality is not positive so that's that's where I where I see myself thank you thank you very much it is the issue of climate change and the need for action was also mentioned by GERG but thanks also for you to you for bringing it out very loud because on all reports the the region is is is a threat and we at international idea see the challenge of climate as a failure of governance and and as a risk to democracy at the same time democracy is the only system that could possibly take action and and get humanity out of of this situation but it's also you know one risks to bring down the other so so strengthening democracy needs to go hand in hand also with with climate action so and thanks for the heartwarming examples of overcoming ethnicity ethnic division over these global issues maybe Dr. Kacharska had anything to highlight something positive in the region or or what could need to change to spur maybe a new wave of democracy in the region thank you yes Alexandra covered the human dimension I mean you posed a big question a new wave of democratization I mean that's that's that's big but if we take a look at the post 90 period that came at a period of a huge change of a transformative change in the in the world at the world level and the fall of a system and I don't think we're going to be we're going to be experiencing that that soon here I completely agree with what Demusch said that most of these state captures happened very much by using legitimate means and this is a very by shaping laws and this is something that Gergy has also worked on very extensively and it came as a I think that in a way our previous government gave a model gave a model for that how to legitimize some of these state captures so I'm not sure that we can expect a big wow event or a big bang that would lead to a new wave of democratization Alexandra covered the the bottom up approach I would go back to the I would emphasize the responsibility of the union to be honest because of the European Union in this sense because I think in this all of this disappointment realism that Alexandra also mentioned I think it's also the time is also a result of this of being in this loophole in being in this alternative scenario of a waiting room for the region to actually exceed to to the union which with the promise that and the expectation that it will have an impact democratizing impact on on the exceeding countries now this whole premise has been severely undermined not only by the example of Poland at Hungary and so on I mean does accession actually mean democratization but if we look at your indices and many other indices it's also raising questions about how currently the European accession process affects these affects the countries in the region that are exceeding coming in mind that Serbia would be classified as part of the frontrunners so this is a bit of a counterintuitive segment in in terms of the European accession process I don't need to go further than that but I think for a region that is encircled in Europe for having in mind the recent political statements that Europe is at an awakening moment I think that there needs to be a re-examination there if there is capacity in in the European Union in some of its member states maybe in the upcoming commission to actually think more of their own enlargement policy as a democratizing tool because we don't I don't I think it's probably too late to be discussing this current this current commission but let's hope that we will all have enough time to reflect on what went wrong at least in the two last commissions on enlargement policy let's say in the last 14 years and to think of what was good so that we can maybe start working together on integrating a region of which is probably now less than 15 million people in total which is completely economically connected to the European to the European Union we did not talk a lot about economy here but if we go back to some of the basic postulates of the democratic consolidation process the economic empowerment of the population is a very important segment of that of that story I am not claiming that economy will trump democracy but there is a certain level of development which needs to go hand in hand as practice history has shown in order to actually be able to build a sound democracy and it's likely to be high a higher level of economic development than what we have currently in in the region thank you thank you very much a clear clear call I believe for the you to step in with a stronger role perhaps gg anything to highlight on what could spur a new wave of democracy or any positive trends you notice I think both alexandra simonita covered it very well with with both very specific examples as as to what could spur democracy really the situation in the region when it comes to rule of law democracy good governance is not that it's best especially when hopes are are concerned so I don't know I I would we can identify examples that that inspire and if you notice the key ingredient in those examples are the people people who are dedicated to democracy and I think that's the keyword that the commission and the EU stakeholders and other western stakeholders should take don't put all your don't bet everything on some politicians on individuals that at a certain moment look reformers and they very soon transform themselves into the new autocrats as we are witnessing currently so the only people the only ingredient that will never let you down are the people so let's work to expand the number of of citizens of societies that are a dear that adhere to democratic values and who which democratic values are very dear and they would stand for for for those values I think this is the and there are many examples I mean Macedonia in 2016 that's what changed things Kosovo over the past several years again is the vibrant society citizens who care about institutions that made such a shift in the political scene that we haven't seen I mean all five other western Balkan countries haven't seen in in the past 20 years I mean within two elections Kosovo changed dramatically the whole political scene that they changed the leaders you see new group of leaders now you know it's and that's all thanks to people who believe in the system who believe in democratic values who believe that their vote can make the difference and even more that their power is exerted not only once in four years but constantly sorry over to you thank you thank you very much Gigi perhaps one comment from Mr. Shausha so yes so quickly they are there indeed good news I mean if if you look as as it was referred to earlier if we look what happened modern history say in North Macedonia that is a success story Gigi just commented and mentioned the Kosovo example if we look if you also note last year a very vibrant very vibrant political and democratic developments in in Podgorica and in Tirana where both capitals were home were home to large protests and and democratic and democratic show of this pleasure of citizens with with their government these are all good signs of vibrant democracies in western Balkans however I think that these are rather isolated isolated episodes rather than than convincing convincing arguments that the region is on a right on a right track and what does it take what does it take to spur this new wave of democratization I don't think there is a single single easy answer and it cannot be I mean democracy is not easy democracy is hard it takes effort it doesn't happen quickly it doesn't improve quickly so it needs continued continued effort in order to advance and improve democracy from year to year for just a little bit even if just for a little bit that's first point second point is that I think and I would hear I would hear like to be proven wrong but I think that history has shown that that processes important processes do not change in western Balkans without without external without external attention and external support so let me put it this way if it hadn't been if it hadn't been for western for western allies and western community people in the western Balkans would still be slaughtering themselves with with ethnic conflicts of the of the of the 90s and so whatever progress has happened in western Balkans no matter how limited is thanks to the western support for the for the region so my point is that if we want to continue this progress I cannot see it happening without without the support of the of the of the in this particular case of the european of the european union but obviously also the united of the united states thank you thank you very much thank you I think it's very resonating from all of you the the attention that that the EU and the west in general should should pay continue to pay to strengthen democracy in the region I'd like to for the sake of time I have many more questions for you but for the sake of time I could perhaps open it to the questions we have now received from from our audience there's a few questions I will not perhaps have the time to to ask all of them because there's quite a few and I apologize in advance too for for those questions that will will not be maybe asked for for the sake of time however perhaps I'll start with the first question specific to Kosovo related to improvements in impartiality of public administration and so the which was illustrated through our GSOD findings and so the question is what are the key changes that led to to this conclusion I believe Genta will take this question thank you yeah thank you as I said earlier the impartial administration impartial administration attribute has two sub attributes absence of corruption and predictable enforcement in Kosovo's case it was an increase in the absence of corruption sub attribute that led to the overall increase in impartial administration more specifically there were two indicators of absence of corruption that had a big increase executive embezzlement and theft and executive prior green corrupt exchanges now the reasons to that could be related to the new political atmosphere the new leadership that Demush has mentioned the strong calls regarding fight against corruption and then significant anti-corruption legislation that was adopted lately so it is early to say and the lack of implementation of existing legislation is challenging but I think when it comes to the political part and the legislation maybe Demush can can discuss that into more detail should you like to add any comments Demush or should we move to the next question perhaps okay I think I will move now to the next question perhaps so civic engagement that was mentioned from several of you one of our guests is asking how can we better support civic initiatives that emerge but then fade away how can we engage better and who can be potential partners I think it's a phenomenon we've witnessed in several countries very positive initiatives that spring but then are not necessarily always sustainable so how can we better support them well I can take this question well I don't think it's at all a problem that they're not long lasting they don't have to become NGOs they don't have to become institutionalized I think that it's important that they emerge that they are there that they self-organize and the support is in various ways but first I think it's also very indicative also towards the bigger established organizations that it's a matter of trust and that they are very that most of these people at the local level are very cautious when it comes to contact with bigger organizations or stoner organizations because we have certain narratives and unfortunately also certain experiences more and more especially in the country where I speak from we we see the emergence of gongos we in Serbia see the emergence of state initiated local movements that's a special phenomenon so the people are very cautious and I think that's good because that also shows that they are very aware where they live we can reach out with providing practical advice legal advice that's very often needed because they're fighting the on legal issues and need this advice and of course in in funding and when we speak about funding I think it's more important to support them than to have a logo visibly somewhere because at the local level they have not the means to deal with the communication issues that might come if a bigger logo of again foreign and then we go into this foreign mercenary dialogue and dilemma so by reaching out actively and whatever you think you can provide to help them or also just to share and exchange experiences so that not each local initiative has to do the same mistakes that somebody else did we see that on a regional level how much they appreciate this kind of really exchange of experiences so I think there is a number of things where these people at the local level can can be supported thank you and next we have a question on how we monitor the state of democracy that concerns minorities in our GSD so I guess this question goes for Alberto thank you this is a very good question the way minorities are considered or treated within a within a given country is monitor through one sub attribute which is social rights and equality and within that sub attribute we have a specific measure on social group equality social group equality tries to measure to what is then well as the name indicates different social groups it has to be generic because in some countries we will be speaking about different ethnic groups in other countries it will be religious groups so it varies all over the world but how equal they are in terms of the existence of religious or ethnic pensions the way power is distributed among socioeconomic positions the representation of disadvantaged communities in positions of power the existence of how power is distributed by social groups social class equality so there is a lot of indicate different indicators that we aggregate all together in order to to get the measure of social group equality of course it's probably one of the most difficult ones to measure because it involves a lot of very complex measurements but it's also one of the one of the indicators that brings that compiles more data so in general it tends to fair pretty well to understand to understand minorities to enjoy their rights and their the full citizenship rights in in any given country thank you thank you very much Alberto then I can perhaps move to the next question well we have a bit of a comparative question here so why have some Balkan countries such as Albania Montenegro Serbia not managed to enter the EU despite being candidate countries for a long time while other Balkan countries like Slovenia and Croatia have managed to enter the EU I don't know who from the panel would like to comment on this perhaps Jerzy over to you we're speaking about two different times when doing those those comparisons I mean of course progress and all that matters but there's a little tiny thing in the accession process called you know accession process is technical but accession is political so for Slovenia there was a completely different political momentum it was part of the big bank and there was a neagerness from the EU at etc currently I mean without due respect for the issues and the to do the homeworks and to do least that we need to do but still in in the last 10 15 years the appetite from the EU on on enlargement and accession is certainly not the one of the of the big bang right during the the 90s and early 2000s so it's it's completely different political momentum I would say thank you thank you very much Jerzy indeed an important emphasis between finding the right balance between the to do homework on our plate and then also jumping on the ship or on the train at the right political momentum perhaps another question always with the role of the internationals that was mentioned repeatedly in your in your comments but more directly related to the impact of the war in Ukraine so how has the impact of the war in Ukraine affected the decline of democracy in the western Balkans and could the end of the conflict bring back international attention for example from the EU and US to the western Balkan countries yes Simonita please to be frank I don't think that the the war the invasion of when Ukraine has very much you can I don't think you can draw causality with the drop of democracy in in the region or that it would be a substantial factor because I think we see these trends very much over time um that I mean they persist over time and I would the presentation show those basically a decade long trend which was evident that you we don't see such big shifts although maybe I might be a bit more cautious when I comment here on Serbia because in Serbia we see a lot of drops in the last year but I don't think it would be though the the war in Ukraine specifically kind of the disclaimer there the bigger concern that we have and that links us to the second part of your question Blerta is when we talk about the role of international community and I think you interpreted my intervention I think the second one is a call for more for more intervention from Europe I think maybe here I'm suffering from my from being in this process for too long but these are countries that have an accession perspective so the engagement of on the side of the European Union needs to come with a mind of supporting future member states I would not see it as traditionally maybe in the context that Demo's mentioned that intervention from outside but I think it's more important how do they actually support the how do we build the institutions here so that they will work for us in the next in the next five decades not not just to patch an issue as sometimes the tendency of solving or intervening will be will be from from the outside the from the outside world unfortunately you know I'm not sure that in the long run we will see what has been hailed as successes of the last year as a contribution to democracy the hailed successes have been the start of the accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania the status of the candidate country to Bosnia with all of the contestations and these I think are directly connected to the granting of a candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova with the much delayed related decision on the visa liberalization of Kosovo to come into force no later than 2024 I'm not sure that these will actually that these steps of the EU unless we see some major change in their attitude will actually contribute to a lot of democracy maybe if that's not later than 2024 will maybe help to buy some of the legitimacy which is left among the cost of our public thank you thank you very much there's still many many questions and I I apologize again to to all of you in the audience for not being able to to ask them within this the time frame of this panel so before we wrap up I would like to ask from each of the speakers one last comment as regards the future so if you could make a forecast so what is on the horizon for the region please perhaps we follow the the order of mistomanage first and then the rest thank you oh wow I don't like thank you I don't like forecasts because um yeah I always leave somehow people in in bad energy when I make forecasts and predictions but yeah I think that we have to be very aware I think that we have to be very cautious we are again discussing security issues we are again speaking about issues thoughts that are in the in the past and that we have overcome them I think that the region is in terrible shape that it's fragile I think that we all know who is to blame for that I really hope that the EU is waking up and that the if something is to be drawn from the war in Ukraine for the Balkans that the EU will really wake up because for years there's also georgia explained they were pretending to to enlarge and we were pretending to exceed they were silent about political criteria they were silent and blind eyed on stabilocracies on state capture they they were silent on what is for example happening in Serbia where media capture is at at such a level that you that we shouldn't speak about media any longer because it's propaganda and for 10 years the EU silently looks at what is being spoken about the EU and how negative it is pictured and now everybody is surprised that the support rates for EU accession have dropped below 40 percent while it was invisible and civil society was raising it but then we were the negative ones the naive ones the ones that don't understand real politics whatever so I think that we have to change and that we have to work that the EU changes its approach because alone I doubt that we will make it honestly thank you thank you very much Miss Kacharska one last comment perhaps future on what the future holds for for the region I can only say what I hope that it holds I mean I hope it holds Democrats than people that are disappointed with democracy because just to reflect there was a here there was a question that said that a lot of the people are actually disappointed I think this is very much a what the what these last 30 years have delivered and I can only say that it I hope that it brings more people that actually are confident in their own capabilities and have the guts to actually stand up for what they think is right thank you very much Georgie one of the things I take from from your report and this panel is that you know people say that smile are contagious what I can say after reading your report is that a democratic decline is more contagious than democratic consolidation and unfortunately that's a lesson that we need to keep in mind for the future like Alexandra I wouldn't dare especially at times like this to make any predictions but I can say that there are a couple of issues and concerns or challenges that we need to take into account while looking at the future I mean issues that are relevant for for democracy and democratic consolidation let me start with the internal factors initially first of all it will very much depend on how we manage the massive outflow of our citizens especially youngsters leaving the country secondly democracy will depend a lot on whether we will succeed as a society to increase the number of people dedicated to fighting democratic values at home certainly there are here there are the issues of rule of sorry rule of law media freedom the re-establishment of checks and balances I know Demusz mentioned a bit but that's a very important very important ingredient that I don't know how we should do it I fully agree with Alexandra that the call of European Commission directed at the governments to please uncapture the state will not work let's be aware about that civic space media freedom and so on but there is also a number of external factors that we need to consider and that unfortunately democracy in the region will depend on that as well first it will depend also on how the EU and the west reacts to russian aggression the russian aggression is is the biggest security development of of contemporary of of nowadays time and and is a massive test among other things also about democracy secondly it will depend how the EU and the west are responsible also to growing influence from competing powers like China thirdly it we need to consider also whether the west or the EU will declare democracy in the western Balkans national security objective for themselves let's let's not let's not fool ourselves the fact that russia is here today is in part also because it was let the to to reach to to this position it was ignored it was sometimes even financed by the EU and that's something that should not should not be tolerated anymore so basically doing the same as the US did for the corruption and anti-corruption they declared it a priority of their strategic interests finally it will also depend on how the EU will solve some of the issues in its own backyard and let's start with democratic decline in some of the EU member states how the EU will address this issue it's important because as I said democratic decline is contagious and if you look at the data presented at the beginning the Balkans western Balkans is declining in all components where central europe is declining itself so it will be very difficult for the EU to impose itself as an actor in the region as on matters that EU itself has failed uh lastly um no i think i think i'll stop here sorry okay more more comments in the next in the future panels and lastly mr sasha please well look under normal circumstances where european continent is not under war i would have many things to say about the future of our region the economy the youth the education etc but under these circumstances i have to say only one simple thing future of the western Balkans will be determined in ukraine ukrainian glorious victory will bring blossoming future for for our region ukrainian defeat will bring a very grave future for our region thank you thank you all thank you very much mr sasha and to all the panelists um a lot of important messages were were given today um and um i it's yeah it's hard for me to to wrap them all up but uh i think a few of the things that uh um came out very clearly is are that uh well number one that democracy is under threat and in decline globally and is no longer to be taken for granted even um in western consolidated countries including in those you know in the long standing democracies of of europe and uh we heard today that also predictably the western Balkans are no exception to this on the contrary uh some issues which were pre-existing have been exacerbated and these were repeatedly mentioned among these state capture media capture corruption uh immigration widespread immigration of especially of youth but even some security issues that uh we thought we had overcome where our back our back uh to trouble the the the fragile democracies of of the western Balkans in positive news if i were to draw a balance i think we also heard uh some encouraging messages uh we we heard examples of how there is potential there is movement there is potential within civil society there are issues uh that uh are are proving to be uniting across the region such as the need for climate action there are also encouraging examples of ability to to improve democracy and institutions um in north Macedonia in Kosovo so so there are improvements but we also heard today that these improvements take time and uh i believe one overarching remark among all speakers was the fact that still um history in the region shows that you know still the role of of western acts actors uh is is determinant in the support of democracies in in the region western actors will continue to to play a role i think we heard uh uh uh repeatedly that the region has been in the waiting line for you a session for for a while now and so perhaps this um this moment which is also historically crucial uh where there is a as one of the speakers put it there is a battle for democracy being played out in in Ukraine and democracy must win um so it's also a historic moment also for for the EU to re-examine uh perhaps its its role and and engagement and leverage in the western Balkans region uh as well um and with these uh final reflections which i hope summarize some of the the core messages that were sent here today i'd like to thank again uh all the speakers um the speakers that are here in this panel uh simonida demosh dirje uh alexandra just left us i'd like to thank mr julio venery who was with us uh here earlier uh and also my colleagues uh sam alberto genta for all the insights of on our work that they provided uh thank you very very much to all of you that logged in to to listen to to and to ask questions uh to this panel today and stay tuned for more discussions uh in the future and with this i would like to close the event for today thank you again thank you have a nice weekend