Recent moves have raised hopes that the Balkan region may one day join the European Union. Accession negotiations have been launched with Croatia, Serbia-Montenegro is in talks on a "stabilisation and association agreement" and Brussels decided this month to start talks with Bosnia.

But while praise flows thick and fast to presidents and prime ministers in Zagreb, Belgrade and Sarajevo for invigorating efforts to apprehend fugitives indicted for war crimes of the 1990s, efforts to build a regional market economy in the former Communist enclave have barely attracted notice.