Sitting on the fence: how the London summit exposed the inertia in the EU's reconciliation policy for the Western Balkans

The 2018 Western Balkans Summit was held in London on 9-10 July. As Denisa Kostovicova explains, there was hope that the summit might officially launch a regional fact-finding commission – RECOM – which would record the victims of human rights violations to help aid the reconciliation process in the region. However, even though the summit put legacy issues on the agenda, it dashed hopes for RECOM at this stage at least, underlining the EU’s lack of a concrete programme for addressing the crimes of the past and advancing reconciliation.