Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Mr. Igor Lukšić PhD., published the article on his blog “Do we need a special envoy for the Balkans?"

„... In June, the press reported that Baroness Catherine Ashton, the EU’s top diplomat, was thinking about creating a Balkan-envoy post and handing it to Paddy Ashdown, the former high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006. Other names circulating in the media included former Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák, who also served as Bosnian high representative from 2007 to 2009. (Montenegrins remember him as the man who oversaw their independence referendum on behalf of the EU back in 2006.) The idea of an EU Balkan envoy is off the table for now, officially because it left the stakeholders divided. Yet the debate focused on who might fill the position, not on whether the position should be created in the first place. A closer examination of the arguments suggests the proposal got scotched due to disagreements over the person, not the post. Some Europhiles reject the idea on grounds that a “special representative for the Balkans” would flag the region as a crisis zone. This argument seems dubious to me. Special envoys are widely viewed as the EU’s eyes and ears in places that require special attention. What seems to be forgotten here is that “special attention” does not necessarily mean keeping the peace in in a war zone. The Balkans requires special focus because we are beginning the stabilization and association process at a time when many EU member states are complaining of “enlargement exhaustion…”