Nationals of the western Balkans (bar Kosovars) can get short-stay visa waivers to enter Schengen.
This huge shift in the daily life of the western Balkans is happening without fanfare.
For the western Balkans the transition from years of disintegration and war never seems to end.
Responding on Tuesday, Serbia's president urged Germany to try to understand the situation in the western Balkans.
BBC: Germany's Angela Merkel ties Serbian EU hopes to Kosovo
When it comes to fighting organised crime, the states of the western Balkans have much to do.
ECONOMIST: Serbian and Croatian police are starting to work together
The Biden visit is an opportunity for America and the EU to push the western Balkans forward together.
So, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have former communist countries in the Caucasus and the western Balkans.
It starts with sure-fire bets such as Croatia, and other small digestible countries in the western Balkans such as Macedonia.
Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to the Western Balkans.
Croatia is not really ready to join, if only because of organised crime, but the EU wants to stabilise the western Balkans, so it will get in around 2010.
Over the last year Turkey has begun to play an assertive role in the western Balkans, working to reconcile Serbs and Bosniaks in Bosnia and rival Muslim groups in Sandzak.
ECONOMIST: Past and present intertwine in Serbia in unexpected ways
If people in Macedonia and elsewhere in the western Balkans lose hope of ever joining the EU, says Macedonia's deputy prime minister, Ivica Bocevski, everybody should start worrying about regional stability.
During the debate on the EU's foreign policy she pointed to the work of the union in brokering a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia in South Ossetia, and the process of peacekeeping in the Western Balkans.
BBC: Baroness Ashton criticised over EU 'diplomatic service'
That may just be negotiating tactics, but a failure to win candidate status would be a heavy blow for Macedonia and for the rest of the western Balkans, which will be watching the Brussels summit unusually closely this week.
ECONOMIST: Why nerves are jangling from Croatia to Macedonia
The western Balkans matter little economically.
ECONOMIST: Talk of an Ottoman revival in the region seems exaggerated
Because the actions of persons threatening the peace and international stabilization efforts in the Western Balkans continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, the national emergency declared on June 26, 2001, and the measures adopted on that date and thereafter to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond June 26, 2012.
This week the Contact Group of six countries dealing with the Balkans (America, Russia and Western Europe's leading quartet) rewarded Mr Milosevic for opening negotiations with secessionists in Kosovo by rescinding an investment ban.
When it was established in 1993, the tribunal was widely seen as a fig-leaf to hide the pusillanimity of the western powers, who did not want to intervene in the conflagration devouring the Balkans.
G8 leaders cannot ignore the signs that small-arms proliferation has made a mockery of state authority in many parts of the developing and ex-communist worlds, including regions, such as Central America and the Balkans, which are uncomfortably close to comfortable western homes.
In February Vietnam came down against recognising Kosovo's independence, disappointing Western powers which had tried to persuade it that the Balkans were a special case and recognition would not set a precedent for separatism elsewhere.
Western officials also fear that full-scale warfare in Macedonia could engulf the whole Balkans.
But western governments rule that out as the start of a redrawing of boundaries in the Balkans which they have long resisted, and which could strengthen demands for a Greater Albania and merely widen the war to other fragile countries, such as Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia.
It took a world war to achieve this in Western and Central Europe, but 1930s-style xenophobic nationalism is still alive and well in the Balkans and in much of Russia.
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