"As Hannah Arendt put it concisely and precisely: “Action and politics, among all capabilities of human life, are the only things of which we could not even conceive without at least assuming that freedom exists... Without freedom political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d'être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action...” Only if local politicians as well as international stakeholders recognise and practice the deeper meaning of Arendt's words as a 'leitmotiv' for their political actions can the Western Balkans find a way out of the permanent crisis of the last years and arrive in Europe, which is where the Balkans genuinely belong. It is only in political action without egoism, ethno-nationalist argumentation, nepotism, corruption, and in a politics centred on citizens and their well-being that the European normality of the Western Balkans as a region lies."