The legal framework of political and parliamentary opposition in the light of the EU Enlargement to the Western Balkans: A comparative foreword

The enlargement to the Western Balkans represents one of the crucial pillars for the next future’s political strategies of the European Union, and discourses on conditionality shed lights on the importance of legal comparison to further analyse the candidate states’ EU acquis within their domestic legal systems. According to this entrenched pattern, key aspects regarding democratic functioning of the political systems and the rule of law are fundamental concerns in order of respecting EU standards. Against this backdrop, opposition (both political and parliamentary) is a key-topic and concern for securing the aforementioned benchmarks. Moving from these postulations, the article addresses different – but interconnected – topics with the aim of fostering a scholarly and interdisciplinary dialogue under a critical methodology, going through several crucial steps: after an introduction drafting the whole structure of the essay, paragraph 2 exposes the reasons in providing an unambiguous definition of ‘opposition’, thus trying to overcome such a burden to define it in political and legal terms. Paragraph 3 provides several comparative public law data – especially in reference to constitutional systems – on how political systems (forms of government) cope with issues deriving from their own democratic machinery. Paragraph 4 introduces the EU enlargement policy to the Western Balkans and recalls the state of the art of the two ‘frontrunners’ (Serbia and Montenegro) in reference to current matters related to opposition. Conclusion highlights the need of considering further hypothesis in dealing with opposition and democratic functioning.