Commentary
EAP 2030
Think Tank
Western Balkans Futures
Where to Next, Western Balkans?
18 May 2022
What brings the future to Eastern Europe? There is no real positive outlook: moderately good prospects suggest a slow, gradual deepening of economic relations with the European Union or bottom-up civic emancipation based on a declining Russia and a passive Brussels.
The Polish Res Publica Research Foundation and the American German Marshall Fund (GMF) recently released a report on the next ten-year outlook of the Eastern European countries. The analysis was funded by the International Visegrad Fund, and several Central- and Eastern European countries participated in its elaboration, including Hungary.
The paper outlines four major scenarios for the future of the region, along with smaller trends and prospects for demographics, energy policy, IT sector, digitalisation and some other sectors.
The analysis focuses on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Ukraine. The group of six countries was created by the European Union by the initiative of Poland in 2009. All members are former Soviet member countries, which at the time of the project had close ties with Russia.