Future of Europe: is the EU’s dream of expansion to the east dead?

Every other building still bears bullet and shell marks, but 23 years since the guns fell silent on the wooded hills surrounding Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital city is largely unrecognisable.

On “sniper alley,” the once deadly main road into town, the 21-floor skyscraper that for years loomed empty and fire-blackened over the city centre has a new facade and a new role – as the seat of the carefully balanced power-sharing government introduced by the 1995 Dayton peace agreement.

Nearby, glass-and-steel Saudi Arabian-owned shopping centres have sprung up to serve middle-class shoppers, tourists trawl the historic bazaar for souvenirs, and hipster eateries and drinking holes do a brisk business a stone’s…

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