President Stevo Pendarovski: “No country that closed itself has grown into an empire” – IGES.
The Institute for Geopolitics, Economics and Security (IGES) had the honor of hosting Prof. Dr. Stevo Pendarovski, former President of North Macedonia, in Sarajevo on 09. November 2025.
Professor Pendarovski gave an inspiring lecture and was the main guest in a dialogue session with IGES members and friends entitled “A New Geopolitical Paradigm: The Place of the Balkans in a Changing Europe”.
The discussion focused on the challenges and opportunities brought by the new European reality, the role of the Balkans in global processes, and the prospects for regional cooperation in the context of current geopolitical changes.
“At the beginning of his presentation, President Pendarovski made a brief review of the political system of the former Yugoslavia, to make an academic comparison of the political culture of the Yugoslav and today’s systems. His review in this context did not compare the systems in a qualitative sense, but rather provided a basis for the continuation of his presentation in which he explained the key geopolitical changes in the Balkans from the time of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia to the modern era.”- IGES.
At the end of his speech, President Pendarovski underlined how important the announcement that Albania and Montenegro will join the European Union by the end of the decade is. “I would like my country to be in that group, but unfortunately, as things stand, the government in Skopje is not thinking in the direction of Euro-Atlantic integration,” President Pendarovski underlined. – IGES