The Financial Times argues the EU as the biggest trading partner of the Balkans should do something more than business as usual if it wants to be effective in South East Europe while its Brussels technocrats should stop contenting themselves with superficial commitments on stability and preparations for Euro-Atlantic integration from local leaders. In a macro analysis of recent concerning developments in the Balkans, FT says that the latest lukewarm visit of EU top diplomat Mogherini to the region showed \"how enthusiasm for the EU has waned across Serbia and the Balkans — and how a region beset by ethnic tensions and economic malaise has again become a playground for great power rivalries between western Europe, Russia and Turkey\". Meanwhile, after the euro-zone and migration crises and the Brexit vote, countries in the region no longer believe the EU can offer a serious prospect of membership, leaving the bloc’s credibility severely dented. With Donald Trump’s election also expected to see the US step back from the region, EU leaders are struggling to show that the bloc can be a stabilizing force in the continent’s most troubled corner. The paper notes that after her visit last week, Ms Mogherini warned of “extremely dangerous” inter-ethnic tensions within or between countries in a region that was also exposed to “global tensions” while Srdjan Darmanovic, Montenegro’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times in an interview that geopolitical conflicts of interest were “very strongly under way”. The paper correctly argues that some in the western Balkans warn that the EU and the US have long neglected the area, contenting themselves with superficial commitments on stability and preparations for Euro-Atlantic integration from local leaders. “Brussels and Washington nurtured relationships with local ‘big men’ who they believed could deliver key political goods; namely, keeping the peace,” says Jasmin Mujanovic, a Bosnian political scientist. “So long as they delivered on those fronts, the EU and US looked the other way on lack of substantive democratic and economic reforms.” At their summit EU leaders are set to reassert their long-term commitment to grant membership to the six western Balkans countries. But with that promise likely to be viewed sceptically, Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies think-tank in Sofia, says the EU needs to be clever about using the leverage it retains. Read the full FT article in here