DISINFO: The EU wants to expand its imperialism in the Balkans
SUMMARY
The EU is agonising: it wants to expand its imperialism in the Balkans, but is powerless. The only thing that moves the EU is money, pushing it to take over, not to integrate, new members for the bloc. This way, the globalist ruling powers want to get more market quotas. The popes of Brussels consider that the 20 million people market of the Balkans belongs to them by their own right.
However, the EU doesn’t have real firepower since a few years, and it is offering only cheap coloured mirrors to the Balkan countries, not deceiving anyone. Everybody knows the other’s game, so the three-day tour of the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen through the Balkans tells nothing to these countries.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about an imperialist West always conspiring to promote its interests and about a collapsing, powerless European Union.
Neither Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to the Western Balkans nor the EU’s policy towards the region is “imperialist”, but part of the EU's enlargement negotiations. This policy offers economic cooperation to spur long-term recovery, foster regional integration and convergence with the EU, through the Economic and Investment Plan (EIP) for the Western Balkans that, among other elements, will provide almost 30 billion euros aimed at closing their socioeconomic gap with the EU. The policy also opens a process of application to join the EU, after certain democratic and social standards are met. Although the current process faces some problems, as Von der Leyen herself acknowledged, applying for EU membership is voluntary. Discontent among Balkan countries is driven by the lack of progress rather than the opposite. Therefore, the accusations of “imperialism” are baseless, driven mostly by Russia’s interests in the Balkans, which perceives the EU as a strategic competitor in the region.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that Western Balkan countries have a deficit of euro enthusiasm, that Serbia’s neighbours are drawn into NATO despite the citizens’ will, that Balkan states are desperate for EU funds but will receive nothing, that NATO bombed Yugoslavia because it wanted to be present in the Balkans, or that there will be a Third World War because of North Macedonia.