Hello from Brussels, where May has rolled in with all the fanfare Europe can muster. That’s because May is the month when the continent takes a collective breath and celebrates what is, arguably its greatest achievement – the European Union, that grand project of peace and cooperation that somehow manages to keep ticking despite everything thrown at it in the past period.
Every year on May 9, Europe Day, the EU institution opens its usually intimidating doors and lets people wander through the endless corridors.
It’s the one day when you and I can actually walk through those imposing buildings and just maybe feel a bit closer to the machinery that shapes Europeans’ way of life.
The crowd gives some warmth to the usually cold corridors of the enormous EU buildings that spread throughout Brussels’ famous Rue de La Loi – the bubble where the expats who work and live in this neighbourhood rarely feel the daily life of a typical Belgian, taking place just a few hundred meters away.
But this May carries extra weight, particularly if you’re watching from the Western Balkans.
This May, Montenegro is marking two decades of independence. And what a gift Montenegrins have received on this porcelain jubilee: EU member states have agreed to establish a working group to start drafting Montenegro’s EU Accession Treaty.