And I would summit. Specifically two. The first, between the leaders of the European Union and the Western Balkans, brought many disappointments, even bitterness. The latter, due to the official support for the candidacy of the two Eastern European countries, was celebrated as historic.

Excess political will towards Ukraine is measured by the deficit of that will towards the Western Balkans. It is an inevitable comparison. Geopolitical will prevailed. In a rush to reward the victim of Russian aggression, the EU has made a mistake for six Southeast European countries, some of which have been waiting for decades for accession talks.

Ukraine and Moldova, which joined the package, gained candidate status with unprecedented speed in the history of the Union. Ukraine ran immediately after the Russian invasion on February 24, and a day later Moldova and Georgia, which will have to wait.

So, anything is possible if desired. It turned out that Ukraine received candidate status mostly because of the war on its territory. No one questions the unanimously confirmed intention of the 27 members to reward Ukraine with a symbolic gesture of solidarity and motivation, but…

If the gesture towards Ukraine is not questioned, which means the statement of the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Layen before the summit, that Ukraine is currently closer to the EU than almost all the countries of the Western Balkans and that it meets all the conditions.

If the key condition is to be at war, then, with a strong dose of cruel cynicism, I would conclude that the way the Western Balkans can accelerate the integration process is to go to war. Just to determine who is the aggressor and who is the victim.

I would not like to spoil the celebration for Volodymyr Zelenski, but a sad and cruel ritual is repeated. There are countries that are "in vogue", a time when the West does everything to give the impression that it is endlessly helping someone build democracy, and then simply forgets about it.

The world circus is moving. Remember Bosnia, FR Yugoslavia 2000, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria а Going out of "fashion" as soon as a new hotspot appears. Cynical perpetual motion. In vain now from Sarajevo they reminded the Europeans in Brussels of their wartime, more dramatically than the Ukrainian one. The chance is missed. The carriage passed.

The question is how long will the fanfare from Kyiv be heard when the war, one way or another, will end and will be left to negotiations that, as we see, can last for years or even decades. But there is no doubt that the Russian invasion has somewhat shaken European leaders and stunned EU bureaucrats. Fears that Moscow could activate smoldering hotspots in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo have once again put the region on the radar. But that is all the "new energy" that was discussed at the summit. If we do not count the repetition of sugary phrases.

It turns out that the EU has neither a clear vision nor a unified enlargement policy, so it is high time for Europeans to define precisely what they want and say clearly. If they see the region in the Union, as they repeated at the Thessaloniki summit in 2003, then it is time to clarify what the "political community" of French President Emmanuel Macron means.

If Ukraine and Moldova are collateral winners in the war, Northern Macedonia and Albania are collateral victims still awaiting the opening of accession negotiations, although, especially Skopje, they have successfully completed all preparations and I claim to be in better shape than pre-war Ukraine.

European Council President Charles Michel and EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell shrug: we can not propose Northern Macedonia and Albania, which are in the package, because one country is blocking. They state that the principle of consensus decision-making is not a good solution, which has long been established in the cases of Hungary and Poland, but nothing beyond that, and whatever it is, will take time.

It turned out that the Europeans did not try too hard to solve the problem. The initiative was left to Macron, who was the first to block Northern Macedonia and Albania, presenting a proposal for a new enlargement methodology. It was not until after the summit that they realized what damage they had done, that they seemed a little upset, and that Bulgaria was threatened with isolation. Couldn't it have been earlier? Why was a memorial service for Macedonia held first, and then only some perspectives were pointed out?

Bulgarian parliament mandates government to approve French proposal to lift veto, but at least two serious issues remain to be resolved: first, no government in Sofia, second, reluctance of Skopje politicians to accept Bulgarian terms .

The EU is showing Janus' faces again. Macron acknowledges that the proposal is not fair to Macedonia, but supports a framework that is unacceptable to Skopje. How much does he, regardless of his advisers, really understand the finesse of the decade-long and extremely complex dispute that touches on national identity: history, language, culture?

Personally, I met many high-ranking EU officials whose knowledge of the Western Balkan countries they visit comes down to Bedeker's knowledge and the briefing they received during the summer. A good connoisseur of the Skopje-Sofia conflict would never use the term "Northern Macedonians".

The French presidency of the EU will be taken over by the Czech Republic from tomorrow. The big question is when Prague will start dealing with Skopje and Sofia. This is certainly not a priority for the Enlargement Commissioner, although he is hungry for some success. His Prime Minister Viktor Orban writes a list from the background, and Serbia is at the top of that list.

While the Russians remove the letter "Z" as the current symbol of the war, the door from Brussels knocking on the Western Balkans still reads "Z": Closed. Kudos to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. He had the courage in the middle of Brussels to speak of the "deceptive spirit of enlargement".

Northern Macedonia was brutally punished. Why go through such a nightmarish journey? First it was blocked by the Greeks around NATO, then by the Bulgarians around the EU and finally by the Europeans preoccupied with Ukraine. Does this again open space for Russia to maneuver something in the background to prevent a wider unification of Europe?