According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, the integration of the Balkan countries not yet in the EU should be stopped and a new model should be put in place for the countries. According to correspondent Oliver Grimm, the solution would be to focus on building up a Balkan union, instead of bringing Balkan countries into the EU.

In a matter of ten years the task would be to build a Western Balkan Union modeled on the EU – abolish the borders, joint market based on the four liberties, a common energy policy, joint telecommunications policy, infrastructure, altogether with civic rights, Die Presse suggests.

The author uses a common Balkan expression – we pretend to welcome you, and you pretend you want to come – to express the position the EU is taking toward the Balkans. In place of the difficult process of bringing the poor countries with high unemployment levels into the EU, Grimm suggests keeping Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro, which he refers to as failed states, in a union of their own. An excuse to put such a plan in motion, which the author agrees would be a radical departure, could be the European elections and the fact that European citizens are clearly not interested in future expansion.