Leadership Quote by Emma Bonino

“Kosovo’s destiny is clearly to join the European Union at some point” is the kind of sentence that sounds like a forecast but functions as a lever. Bonino isn’t describing fate; she’s trying to manufacture it. The word “destiny” wraps a messy, contingent political project in the language of inevitability, turning a contested geopolitical question into a presumed endpoint. That’s the rhetorical trick: if the destination is “clear,” then opposition starts to look like obstructionism rather than disagreement.

The hedges matter. “At some point” acknowledges the EU’s enlargement fatigue, Kosovo’s unresolved recognition status, and the region’s long to-do list on rule of law, corruption, and minority protections. It’s reassurance without a deadline, a promissory note that costs the speaker little but signals alignment with a European future. The line is calibrated to multiple audiences: Kosovars who need proof they’re not trapped in a permanent waiting room; EU publics who want stability in the Western Balkans without another crisis; and regional actors for whom EU accession remains the main alternative to nationalist backsliding or external patronage.

Bonino, a veteran Italian politician associated with liberal Europeanism, is also smuggling in a normative claim: that the EU is still the horizon of legitimacy. In the post-Yugoslav landscape, “joining Europe” has always been about more than economics. It’s about recognition, sovereignty, and a guarantee against returning to the 1990s. Calling it destiny is a way of declaring that Kosovo’s story ends not in limbo, but in membership.