The European Union (EU) hasn’t had a great track record on enlargement recently. Some countries have felt that as soon as Brussels announced a tentative timetable for accession—what the EU calls a ‘membership perspective’—the initiative has been quickly and quietly forgotten.

The Balkans are no exception. Therefore, the comprehensiveness of the EU’s strategy for the Western Balkans published in early February came as somewhat of a surprise. Nevertheless, the EU has a major strategic interest in creating stability, security and prosperity in its immediate neighbourhood. No one wants to repeat the bloody Balkan wars of the 1990s or the migration crisis of the last two years. That means giving serious consideration to the western Balkans nations eventually joining the EU.

The EU strategy identifies specific initiatives ‘to support the transformation of the Western Balkans’. These focus on the rule of law, migration and security, socio-economic development, infrastructure, digitalisation and regional reconciliation. All aim to help Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Albania in their reform processes. If successful, candidate countries could join the EU by 2025.

The EU’s commitment shows that its current member states support the Balkan countries’ eventual accession and are prepared to assist organisationally and financially during the region’s transformation. That will particularly allow for the monitoring of the quality of reforms. It also binds the EU to ‘welcome new members once they have met the criteria’—in order to avoid empty promises and to maintain the EU’s credibility.

One of the candidate countries’ most important steps is to fulfil Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty, including the Copenhagen Criteria—institutional stability that guarantees democracy, a market economy, and the ability and willingness to take on the obligations of EU membership. According to the European Commission: ‘Joining the EU is far more than a technical process. It is a generational choice, based on fundamental values, which each country must embrace more actively …’

Montenegro and Serbia are the only two of the six candidates that have begun official membership talks. The EU strategy outlines specific steps for both countries that could lead to EU membership in 2025. That attention caused joy in Belgrade and Podgorica. The other four states were less cheerful because they received only renewed encouragement to reform.

Nevertheless, the document is an invitation to board the EU ship. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker repeated this message constantly during his tour of the region at the end of February.

While all six candidates share similar challenges—corruption, sovereignty and autonomy disputes, and weak rule of law, to name just a few—every country has unique issues. For example, Serbia can’t join unless it normalises relations with Kosovo because the EU won’t ‘import’ situations that could destabilise the union.

Albania is experiencing internal struggles over its judicial reforms. Opposition MPs released smoke bombs in parliament last year to protest the government’s appointment of an interim general prosecutor. Establishing the office of the prosecutor is a required reform step. However, the opposition wanted the prosecutor to be appointed by an independent commission rather than by the ruling party, in part because the prosecutor will be charged with cracking down on corruption, including among politicians.

The Balkan economies aren’t yet competitive enough to survive the EU single market. For example, Bosnia and Herzegovina is experiencing its highest youth unemployment rate for years (54.3% in 2016), a level surpassed recently by Kosovo (57.6%).

Bosnia and Herzegovina isn’t struggling only economically. The internationally brokered Dayton Agreement of 1995 was the best solution at the time to end the war and to provide a pathway for peaceful state building. However, more than 20 years later the agreement’s rules have cemented ethnic frictions.

Political candidates must identify with one of the three societal and ethnic groups. Candidates who decline to identify as either Bosnian-Serb, Bosnian-Croat or Bosniak, can’t participate in elections. Despite a common flag, common anthem and common sports teams, a national identity for Bosnia and Herzegovina remains far from reality. Becoming a member of the EU would allow its citizens to identify as European—perhaps bridging rifts in society and developing a common view of the future, particularly for the younger generations.

All six western Balkan states should grasp the EU’s outstretched hand. Russia monitors closely what’s going on in the Balkans—as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent visit to Belgrade shows—especially activities associated with EU or NATO membership. It cracks the whip when it feels it’s necessary. But Moscow’s behaviour shouldn’t intimidate the western Balkan states—witness Montenegro’s recent accession to NATO.

It’s in Europe’s long-term strategic interest that the western Balkan countries meet the EU’s criteria and initiatives for membership. And the six candidates shouldn’t see the accession process as a competition to be the first to join. It’s in their collective interest to face current and future challenges together.

Achieving membership for the six would also send a strong message to Russia that the Balkan countries aren’t just a part of Europe geographically, but part of a wider EU family sharing common values.

Traveling through Germany in the run-up to its federal election on 24 September, one cannot help but be struck by the lingering signs of profound trauma from the 2015 refugee crisis.

Suddenly and virtually without warning, nearly a million desperate people—mostly Syrians fleeing the carnage in their homeland—flocked to Germany. And while Germany may be Europe’s most bureaucratically well-managed country, even it was overwhelmed.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to the crisis two years ago was to throw out the rulebook and open her country’s borders. She famously told the German people, ‘Wir schaffen das’ (We can do it).

But German public opinion today suggests that the country has become warier of such bold gestures. Yes, Germany did it, because there was no alternative; and many Germans are proud of their country for rising to the occasion. But most hope that such a crisis never happens again.

Although many Germans have come to terms with what happened two years ago, a small minority still feels betrayed. They have responded with anger and xenophobic nationalism, and these sentiments will undoubtedly be reflected in how they vote.

But Germany’s trauma from the refugee crisis should be put in perspective. Far more refugees have sought and found protection in countries such as Lebanon and Turkey than in Germany. In relative terms, Germany would have had to take in 20 million refugees to match Lebanon in 2015. In Turkey, Istanbul alone is now hosting more refugees than all of Germany.

Of course, Germany is not the only European country that remains unsettled from the refugee crisis. In my own country, Sweden, a political party that wants to shut us off from the rest of the world will most likely make strong gains in next year’s general election. And in many Central European countries that only recently regained their sense of sovereignty, refugees are widely viewed as posing a threat to national identity.

One way or another, these issues will dominate European politics in the years ahead. Europe is slowly trying to build up resilience to the kind of trauma it experienced in 2015. It is a continent that once exported war and turmoil, but that now wants to protect itself from its neighbours’ problems.

One of the lessons from 2015 is that the European Union will need to develop a far stronger common foreign and security policy. The EU must replace lofty rhetoric with concrete action, while also accepting its regional and global responsibilities. Barbed wire fencing between Hungary and Serbia will not shield Europe from the effects of war in Ukraine, putsches and terrorism in Anatolia, or violent conflagrations in the Levant and Mesopotamia. And it will not help Europe manage the dramatic shift now underway in Africa, which will be home to 40% of the world’s working-age population in a few decades.

Another lesson from 2015 is that European countries must learn to redefine their national identities. The United States, Australia and Canada have all been built on immigration, and most of us are the progeny of people from somewhere else. Indeed, there is not much left of the ‘first nations’ in these countries. It is now entirely possible for there to be more people of Swedish descent in Chicago than in Stockholm.

To be sure, Europe is different from its Western counterparts. Its tribes have been fighting one another for millennia. And for the past two centuries, Europeans have been building ever-stronger nation-states and national identities on the basis of long, complicated historical experiences.

The EU itself was of course built by nation-states. But their citizens wanted to overcome their long legacy of tribalism and war. Judged by that objective, the EU’s first half-century has been a tremendous success. And yet the strains are there for anyone to see. Whether justified or not, when people perceive a threat to their national identity, their tribal instincts kick in. And for a truly frightened few, Brussels and Mecca have both come to be seen as mortal threats.

For Europe to find its place in a rapidly changing world, its citizens will have to learn to tap multiple identities. One can be a proud Swede and a proud European at the same time; one can also be both German and Turkish, and derive strength from that duality. It is not disloyal to see oneself as a citizen of the world. On the contrary, it is honourable.

Such a shift in attitudes would make for a very different Europe. We would have finally moved on from ancient tribal conflicts and fears, and embraced a networked, digital future. Merkel, who will likely be elected to another four-year term as chancellor on 24 September, told Germans that they ‘can do it’. But whether Germany and the rest of Europe will do it remains to be seen. We have our work cut out for us.

We’ll have to wait to see what Donald Trump’s election means for Europe. Immediate responses have predicted a boost for right wing populist political parties in Europe. The presence and popularity of Eurosceptic and nationalist parties has been growing in Europe for some years. Like Trump, they’re also seen to be drawing on public resentment towards a remote political class that failed to resolve the economic consequences of the financial crisis, the challenge of immigration, or prevent the dilution of national culture from the EU’s freedom of movement policies. The impacts of the US election will be varied in nature and scope, but Russia is best placed to gain the biggest strategic dividend.

Europe’s political environment and institutions are very different from the US and its geopolitical situation is far more complex. Trump’s victory doesn’t mean a wave of far-right regimes will pop up across Europe. However, the most significant impacts of rising populism can already be seen among the traditional centre-right and left parties as they move to the right to deflect the populist challenge now newly energized by Trump’s victory.

Trade is emblematic of fissiparous forces at work in the EU. Already national governments have been moving to distance themselves from the EU’s negotiation of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In part that’s an attempt to parry the political capital being made by a collection of far right groups, environmentalists and social activists. The concerns of those groups include consequences for employment, maintenance of European standards, and the further undermining of national sovereignty and independence.

Although serious doubts already existed about success of the trade agreement, the anti-free trade thrust in Trump’s campaign means the TTIP will now be almost impossible to resurrect. Inevitably, Eurosceptic and xenophobic parties will claim this as a victory but worryingly major European parties, including in Germany and France, have will also seek to claim credit.

Even if they’re successful in blunting the electoral appeal of the Eurosceptic and xenophobic parties by adopting some of their policies, mainstream European parties will have irreversibly changed the political landscape. Support for a supra-national arrangement like the EU can probably only come out of a catastrophic event such as the Second World War and once that support’s lost, it’s inevitable that the process of greater integration and expansion will be reversed.

Russia may be the primary beneficiary of Europe’s reaction to Trump’s victory. Russia’s recent actions in the Ukraine and Syria have been described as part of a geopolitical project to undo the ‘post–Cold War Euro-Atlantic security order.’ Russia has already made progress on this score. If the Trump presidency now contributes to the unravelling or weakening of the unity of the EU, as well as  unsettling NATO, it would represent a significant strategic gain for Russia.

The European Council on Foreign Relations warns that, ‘Moscow’s “special services” conduct active measures aimed at subverting and destabilizing European governments’. One means employed by Russia has been to clandestinely support European Eurosceptic and xenophobic parties. Early this year Congress tasked the US intelligence community to investigate Russia’s infiltration and ties with the right wing parties in Europe as a result of growing concern about, ‘Moscow’s determination to exploit European disunity to undermine NATO, block US missile defence programs and revoke punitive economic sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea’.

However many observers already see the evidence of the connections and ideological synergy between Putin’s Russia and the right wing parties in Europe and proof of Russian financial support. Were the success of the Trump campaign to presage a similar upsurge of electoral success for anti-EU or nationalist parties in the upcoming European elections only Russia could gain from the consequential pressure on European unity.

Whether Russia’s geopolitical maneuvering is labelled ‘hybrid war’ or seen as a revival of Soviet Cold War tactics, Moscow has plenty of scope to apply increased pressure to the EU and NATO as the supranational bonds begin to soften. Signs of a warming of Russia–US relations coupled with a follow through by the new US administration’s demands for European NATO members to meet agreed funding levels or to subsidizing US troop presence will provide fertile ground for Russian adventurism—in the Baltics, the Balkans and the Caucasus, and through political proxies in Europe.

The EU was already under strain prior to Trump’s election. The anti-EU forces, with ongoing support from Russia, will undoubtedly adopt and adapt the formula that brought Trump electoral success. That will force the traditional political parties across Europe to shift further from the liberal centre towards the nationalistic right. In turn that will further weaken the EU, and eventually NATO, relative to Russia.

The consequences will go beyond the EU. It will become harder to maintain the Western consensus over sanctions on Russia for the Ukraine and reduce the capacity of the US and its allies to exercise strategic influence in many places around the world.

In the early 1960s, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously quipped that the United Kingdom had lost an empire, and not yet found a role. Afterwards, successive British leaders tried to change that, by forging a new role for Britain in Europe. The country’s just-concluded ‘Brexit’ referendum, in which a majority of voters expressed their desire to leave the European Union, represents the spectacular failure of that effort—and the end of an era.

Britain’s journey toward Europe began in the early 1970s, when the firmly pro-European Prime Minister Edward Heath took the country into the European Economic Community, the EU’s forerunner. His successor, Harold Wilson, secured the membership with a 1975 referendum.

And Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act, which created the single market—one of the most important steps in European integration, and one that owed much to British inspiration. Her successor, John Major, who campaigned actively for Britain to remain in the EU prior to the recent referendum, was instrumental in forging the Maastricht Treaty. While Tony Blair was in power, he spoke eloquently about Britain’s European mission.

Then came David Cameron, who wavered in his attempt to keep the Conservative Party united, and ended up with losing both Europe and the party.

To be sure, Cameron wasn’t necessarily pitching Europe to an agreeable audience. Many Britons retain a certain nostalgia about the past, which they recall as more familiar, controlled, and safe.

That nostalgia was constantly reinforced by a vitriolic anti-European—and, in particular, anti-German—campaign spearheaded by some of the country’s leading media. To read the Daily Mail or the Sun in the last few years was to encounter a kind of atavistic nationalism—often backed by blatant lies—on a scale rarely seen in other European countries.

But there was also a problem with the pitch. Fearing political fallout, even leaders who genuinely supported European integration hesitated to defend the EU in a bold or inspiring manner to their constituents. For their part, the leaders who opposed the EU, such as former London Mayor Boris Johnson, who led the ‘Leave’ campaign, simply continued to apply a tried and true formula: stoking the fires of fear-based nationalism.

When British leaders crossed the English Channel to Europe, however, everything changed. Leaving their Euroskepticism behind, they continued to deepen the UK’s role in Europe. When I was Sweden’s foreign minister, I attended more than 130 meetings of the EU’s various ministerial councils, and I can honestly attest that the UK’s voice was among the most prominent in every one.

The truth is that the EU that has emerged over the last decade has been shaped in no small part by the UK. Progress on the single market has helped to boost competitiveness. New free-trade agreements are giving European economies access to major markets around the world. The achievement of a global climate agreement promises not just to protect the environment, but also to cement Europe’s role as a leader in sustainability. And enlargement has enhanced Europe’s security substantially.

These are, by all reasonable standards, remarkable UK-led achievements. But this was mostly a well-guarded secret back home. And that is the failure that lies at the root of the calamity that is Brexit.

The UK has now officially lost its chance at securing, once and for all, the leading role in Europe that was there for the taking. What is more, the UK’s national political landscape is in ruins. The Conservative Party is deeply split; the Labour Party is inert under a nostalgic leftist leadership; and the Liberal Democrats have more or less left the scene.

And the UK may be headed toward further ruptures. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, which overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU, has said that another referendum on Scottish independence is ‘highly likely’, calling the removal of Scotland from the EU ‘democratically unacceptable’.

While the likelihood of a breakup remains impossible to predict, the virus of political divorce has certainly proved contagious—and a more fragmented Europe is undoubtedly a less safe one.

In answering one question, elderly English voters—the core of the ‘Leave’ electorate—have raised a bevy of new ones. Will the UK settle for a satellite-type relationship with the EU? Will it become little more than the rural hinterland of an offshore financial center on the Thames? Will its leaders find yet another role for it to play in the world, or allow their country to fade slowly into irrelevance?

Only time will tell. In the meantime, the UK is set to endure substantial political and economic pain.

Several weeks ago, at a border security conference in London, I thought I was going to see something akin to the recent Ukrainian parliament brawl. A British MP and a Migration Watch representative separately declared the Schengen Agreement to be ‘dead’, which on both occasions was met with passionate jeers and cheers from the audience.

Speakers from the European Union later argued in response that the Schengen Agreement is alive, sick or immortal. Passionate discussions concerning the Schengen Agreement’s future continued across the two-day program.

Freedom of movement was a central tenant of both the Treaty of Rome and the European Economic Community that it formed. But neither instrument provided a sufficiently strong enough argument to compel all European Community members to abolish their border control measures with other members.

It was the failure of the European Economic Community to negotiate open borders between member states in the early 80s that led the initial five nations to sign the Schengen Agreement on 14 June 1985.

At 30, the Schengen Agreement is neither young nor old. Despite current criticism, it hasn’t been without economic successes. It has survived a number of crises, including the fall of eastern European communism.

A number of vocal UK commentators have recently criticised the Schengen Agreement’s performance in the face of this year’s irregular migration crisis. Since January 2015, there have been an unprecedented 1.2 million illegal border crossings into the Schengen Area: and unfortunately well over 3,700 drowning deaths associated with the Syrian crisis.

UK Border Force operations in Calais provide visible evidence of the British government’s dissatisfaction with the Schengen Area’s border controls. One could be forgiven for characterising those operations as being akin to the construction of ‘fortress UK’.

Much of the current criticism of the Schengen Area and Agreement is related to their perceived failures in stemming irregular migration flows and the uneven application of external Schengen border controls in Italy and Greece. From a non-European observer’s perspective, it appears that arguments about the Schengen’s Agreement’s future are close to boiling point.

But such criticisms are predicated on assumptions that the flow of refugees could have actually been stopped. I’m not convinced that’s the case.

The Schengen Agreement has provisions within its framework to prevent states from introducing customs and tax measures as quasi visa controls. But the agreement doesn’t prohibit states from reinstating border controls to meet extraordinary national threats for short periods. That has occurred on at least four occasions in different member states prior to the 2015 irregular migration crisis.

In 2010 Malta introduced temporary checks for a papal visit. In 2011, France closed its border to trains carrying Tunisian refugees. That same year, Denmark tightened borders in response to illegal immigration and organised crime. And Estonia introduced temporary checks due to a 2014 US presidential visit.

As such, border closures by France, Belgium, Hungary and Slovenia in response to the 2015 irregular migration crisis and recent terror attacks aren’t unprecedented. And as such, they don’t, on their own, spell the end of Schengen Agreement.

The spirit of the Schengen Agreement is immortal, if for no other reason than the economics of the alternatives. The private and public sectors across the Schengen Area are now reliant on the cost and time savings provided by open internal borders. And during a time of austerity the permanent reinstatement of border functions doesn’t appear affordable for many member states.

For those reasons, I believe that the Schengen Agreement will survive this current crisis: albeit possibly a little smaller should Greece and Italy be expelled. And I suspect that Turkey’s admission to Schengen Agreement will be delayed further as the member states become more risk adverse.

The experiences of the Schengen Area in 2015 have real implications for ASEAN leaders considering an integrated community with labour mobility.

In its time as chair, Malaysia has championed an integrated ASEAN community where goods, services, investment, capital and skilled labour flow freely across physical borders.

ASEAN’s pursuit of consensus may be the factor that contributes to the future proofing of this integrated community. In contrast with the ‘all-in’ Schengen Agreement model, the ASEAN approach will be cautious and focused on consensus. That approach will allow integration to be evolutionary in nature, and reversible if necessary: sovereignty will always reign supreme.

ASEAN’s approach to free flowing skilled labour illustrates that cautious approach. To date, much of ASEAN’s efforts towards the creation of free flowing skilled labour has been focused on the accreditation of mutual recognition arrangements for professions. Actual movement of skilled labour will be strictly controlled by individual member states. In parallel, ASEAN member states are developing policy arrangements to protect domestic labour forces.

Over the next 10 years, ASEAN’s member states are likely to derive significant benefits from their proposed economic and labour force integration. The diverse levels of economic development in ASEAN’s member states make integration a much more difficult prospect than that experienced in the Schengen area.

The Schengen Agreement’s current trials should however illustrate to ASEAN member states that future border arrangements must be robust enough to deal with extraordinary challenges, if they are to stand the test of time.

ASEAN’s member states should consider and balance both the economic and security dimensions of any future border arrangements. And they should maintain the frameworks and capacity to implement extraordinary border controls for short periods of time in the face of future risks and threats.

The Schengen Agreements recent experiences also illustrates that many of the integration decisions that are now being considered may be unable to be reversed. In this context, ASEAN’s cautious approach may prevent it from sleepwalking into problems further down the track.