What the Balkans have in common

The range, and the name that travelled

Classical writers called it Haemus. The Stara Planina crosses Bulgaria and ends at Cape Emine, and balkan is the Turkish word for a wooded mountain chain. In 1808 the German geographer August Zeune took the name off that one range and put it on the entire peninsula, on the understanding that the chain ran unbroken from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. It does not, and the Adriatic side belongs to a different system altogether. The Dinaric ranges carry the high points in three of the records: Dinara in Croatia at 1,831 metres, Maglić in Bosnia and Herzegovina at 2,386 metres, Zla Kolata in Montenegro at 2,534 metres. Musala in the Rila reaches 2,925 metres in Bulgaria and Mount Olympus 2,918 metres in Greece. Korab, at 2,764 metres, stands on the frontier between Albania and North Macedonia and is the high point in both records.

Romania's high point sits outside all of that. Moldoveanu, at 2,544 metres, is in the Carpathians, north of the Danube and north of any physical reading of the peninsula, whose northern limit is usually drawn along the Danube, the Sava and the Kupa. On that line only Dobruja lies inside. Political and historical usage keeps the whole country in, and the disagreement is old enough that the standard statistical scheme declines to arbitrate it: the M49 codes published by the UN Statistics Division have no Balkans at all, filing Bulgaria and Romania under Eastern Europe and every other member here under Southern Europe.

The retreat, and the dates it left

Greek independence was set out in the London Protocol of 3 February 1830 and settled by the Treaty of Constantinople in 1832. The rest of the peninsula's borders begin at one document. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on 13 July 1878, recognised Serbia, Montenegro and Romania as independent states, made Bulgaria an autonomous principality still tributary to the Sultan, and handed the administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary while leaving Ottoman sovereignty over it formally intact. Bulgaria declared full independence on 5 October 1908, and Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina outright that same week.

Albania's independence dates from 1912, the year the first of the Balkan Wars broke out. What remained of the Ottoman frontier in Europe was settled by the Balkan Wars, in the Treaty of London of 30 May 1913 and the Treaty of Bucharest of 10 August 1913, which divided the region called Macedonia between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. Almost every argument in the century that followed is legible in those two documents.

Read through the seats at the United Nations

The accession dates in the member records work as a calendar. Greece joined at the founding, on 25 October 1945. Bulgaria and Romania entered on 14 December 1955, in the package admission that broke a decade of vetoes. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia were admitted together on 22 May 1992, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia came apart. The state now called North Macedonia entered on 8 April 1993 under a provisional reference, not under a name. Serbia's seat dates from 1 November 2000, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was admitted as a new member instead of continuing the old one. Montenegro's dates from 28 June 2006, after a referendum on 21 May and a declaration on 3 June of that year. Albania also holds a seat, though its record gives no date of admission. Kosovo holds no seat.

A name settled by treaty, and a river that was not

Greece and its northern neighbour signed an agreement at Prespa on 17 June 2018. It entered into force on 12 February 2019, and the neighbour became the Republic of North Macedonia. Accession to NATO followed on 27 March 2020, which the dispute had blocked since 2008. The river that rises above Gostivar and reaches the Aegean west of Thessaloniki changes name at the same border with no treaty at all: Vardar upstream, Axios downstream.

Kosovo

The assembly in Pristina declared independence on 17 February 2008. Serbia rejects the declaration. The General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice whether it accorded with international law, and the Court answered on 22 July 2010 that the declaration did not violate general international law, while stating that the question put to it did not require an opinion on statehood or on recognition. The catalogue prints the declaration, the objection and the advisory opinion, and settles none of the three.

One place the disagreement reaches the figures rather than the prose: the high point in Serbia's record is Velika Rudoka in the Šar Mountains at 2,658 metres, and the high point in Kosovo's is Gjeravica at 2,656 metres.

A language on three records

Albanian is an official language in three of the member records: Albania's, Kosovo's and North Macedonia's. Serbian also appears in three, in the records of Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it stands beside Bosnian and Croatian.

The euro, arriving by four different doors

Greece entered the euro area on 1 January 2001 and Croatia on 1 January 2023. Bulgaria followed on 1 January 2026, the lev converting at 1.95583 to the euro. That figure turns up twice in this group, because the convertible mark of Bosnia and Herzegovina is fixed at the same rate: both currencies were tied to the Deutsche Mark before the euro existed, and both inherited the mark's own conversion rate when it went.

Montenegro arrived from the opposite direction, without asking. The Deutsche Mark was made legal tender there alongside the dinar on 2 November 1999, became the sole legal tender on 1 January 2001, and gave way to euro cash in March 2002, none of it under any agreement with the European Central Bank. In Kosovo the question was answered by UNMIK Regulation No. 1999/4 of 2 September 1999, which permitted any currency to be used for payments, and euro notes replaced marks there in 2002.

Outside the euro and the convertible mark, four currencies remain: the Romanian leu, the Serbian dinar, the Macedonian denar and the Albanian lek.

Where the edges are argued

Western Balkans is an enlargement category, and the compass has little to do with it. It covers Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, which is what was left of the enlargement queue after Croatia acceded on 1 July 2013. All six are filed in this group. Albania holds candidate status and opened accession negotiations on 19 July 2022. Slovenia, which the physical peninsula reaches into, is filed in this catalogue under Central Europe, and a reader after the peninsula as the atlases draw it should take that country alongside this group.

The groups divide the members sharply and by date. Greece joined the European Communities on 1 January 1981, Bulgaria and Romania the Union on 1 January 2007, Croatia on 1 July 2013. NATO accession runs from Greece on 18 February 1952 through Bulgaria and Romania in 2004, Albania and Croatia in 2009 and Montenegro in 2017 to North Macedonia in 2020. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo appear in neither list. Several institutions prefer Southeast Europe for the whole area, on the grounds that a compass direction carries no mountain range behind it and no argument about which peaks count.