What is the Open Balkan Initiative?

The idea of a so-called “mini-Schengen area” in the Balkans is not a new one, first being hypothesised as an economic area of states on the Balkan peninsula in the early 1990s, but was later scrapped due to the Yugoslav conflicts. Despite this, the idea has made a resurgence in the past couple of years and is now focused on those non-European union states of the Western Balkans.