Cohesion and dissolution of the European Union: the Yugoslav lesson

The objective of this article is to compare the structural elements of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the European Union in terms of tendencies towards dissolution. To do so, the article will identify and compare the crucial centrifugal and centripetal forces in these two projects of integration: monetary union, fiscal and cohesion policies and political adhesives; asymmetric crises effects, severe development differences and a comparison of levels of trade integration. The article compares the political moments of stress – the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the 2015–16 period in the European Union which saw two relevant processes: the successful Brexit campaign which brought along the dissociation of UK from the EU and the unsuccessful anti-austerity campaign in Greece, which could have brought the position of Greece in European integrations into question.