US President Joseph Biden extended a national emergency executive order on the Western Balkans for another year to deal with threats to US national security and foreign policy.

“I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13219 with respect to the Western Balkans,” a statement said and recalled that the Executive Order was signed in 2001 to deal with threats to US national security by “persons engaged in, or assisting, sponsoring, or supporting, (I) extremist violence in the former Republic of Macedonia (what is now the Republic of North Macedonia) and elsewhere in the Western Balkans region, or (ii) acts obstructing the implementation of the Dayton Accords in Bosnia or United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 of June 10, 1999, in Kosovo”.

The order was amended in 2003 and expanded with another executive order in 2021 because the situation in the Western Balkans “stymies progress toward effective and democratic governance and full integration into transatlantic institutions, and thereby constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

“The actions of persons threatening the peace and international stabilization efforts in the Western Balkans, including acts of extremist violence and obstructionist activity, and the situation in the Western Balkans, which stymies progress toward effective and democratic governance and full integration into transatlantic institutions, continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” the statement said.