The articles in this collection are full of ideas as to how to define a better way which secures and delivers the integration of south-east Europe. The EU needs to do much more to drive the integration process and to ensure that south-east Europe has a credible membership prospect sufficient to deliver meaningful reforms and progress in the countries of the region. The events in Bosnia in spring 2014 - of riots and occupations, of frustration and anger, but also of debate and engagement - show that there remain sizeable gaps in this activity for which the EU, as the leading power broker, must take responsibility. The EU is currently failing south-east Europe - and it must try a different tack if it is to accept those responsibilities and to ensure that south-east European countries are to be welcomed fully into our common European home. A new impetus towards Europeanisation is urgently needed. In the meantime, a process of enlargement that is open-ended and which has no pre-determined outcomes will remain one that is prolonged and, furthermore, the fear remains that this may well turn out to be one that indeed has no actual outcome. The costs of that growing instability in Europe's neighbourhood, a region which is not just integrally bound to Europe but one which is part of its geographical and historical heart, are likely to be significant.