The balkan migrant route: a eu unresolved crisis?

Abstract

This article aims to underline how the Western Balkans are an area of fundamental geo-strategic interest for the security inside and outside Europe. Its geostrategic importance was even more evident when, since 2015, the Western Balkans havebeen crossed by one of the most impressive migratory routes to Europe, the socalled “Balkan route”, showing the political instability of both the region and the EU. The massive flow of asylum seekers led the EU institutions to recognize in April 2015 the exceptional nature of the situation, calling unsuccessfully for the adoption of solidarity measures to overcome the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the so-called "frontline Member States". In this framework, the article intends to briefly investigate the limits of the existing regulatory framework, which was unable to offer an adequate response to such a situation, as well as of the proposals of the EU Pact on migration of asylum in order to find a solution to a crisis that is not only a migration crisis, but a deeper crisis of identity that is struggling to balance the coexisting interests of the EU legal system.