Mr Oleksandr HLEBA delivered a lecture at the Uzhhorod National University, Ukraine

On 15 October 2019, Mr Oleksandr HLEBA, Senior Academic Assistant in the European Interdisciplinary Studies Department, delivered a lecture on the Foreign Policy Alignment of the Western Balkan Countries with the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union for BA students at the Faculty of International Economic Relations of Uzhhorod National University in Ukraine.

Mr HLEBA outlined the accession process from the legal and practical angles and positioned a candidate country’s convergence with the CFSP within the accession process under chapter 31 of the acquis communautaire. He further discussed the state of play of the EU’s enlargement towards the Western Balkans and described major challenges it is confronted with both within the EU and in the region under consideration. Mr HLEBA shared also the findings of his research on the foreign policy alignment of the Western Balkan countries with the EU’s CFSP and shed light on the motives of (non-)alignment, depicting future possible scenarios and their repercussions for the EU integration of the Western Balkans.