Yet if Serbia can now bring itself into the post-national European mainstream at last, this confirmation of the EU's soft power in transforming and democratizing its post-communist environs could help mitigate the EU's present self-doubt over the euro crisis.

The EU has considerable soft power which can bring about reforms in human rights and level-playing-field trading that have not only improved the lives of its own citizens but will also improve those who aspire to join (eurozone membership is something else).

However, the EU video So Similar, So Different, So European is slightly, well, different. It doesn’t originate from the global province towards the center, not even the other way round. It is a narrative the EU is telling to itself.

In the region, the step from energy to the vital issue of peace and security is not far. Also, Turkey’s “soft power” as a forerunner of democratization, free trade and a liberalized economy in the Arab Spring, makes its role indispensible.

If the EU boasts of its reliance on "soft power," that is because it has no choice. Its head of foreign affairs, the British baroness Catherine Ashton, has been called "the world's highest-paid female politician," yet she remains anonymous and has no influence on world events whatsoever. Her position sums up everything that is wrong with the EU -- expensive but ineffective.

A Europe that has seen 67 years of post-war peace makes for an inviting haven for the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, who went through a harrowing conflict in the 1990s. For them, entry into the EU is still, above all, a guarantee of security, stability, and peace. In this stricken corner of Europe, the EU’s soft power is very real.

We cannot tolerate a new candidate for membership of the EU that is bringing in a frozen conflict ... You cannot have it both ways - candidate status moving nicely along and at the same time having a stranglehold on northern Kosovo. That sentiment is shared by a number of EU countries,

The restoration of mosques carried out by the Foundation of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet Vakfı) and the Turkish Cooperation and Development Agency (TİKA) constitute solid ground for Davutoğlu’s public diplomacy in the Balkans.