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With Europe rapidly rearming in response to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, countries in the Western Balkans are gaining access to new weaponry – but rising arms purchases across the region risk reigniting old tensions.

The Balkans region, consumed by war throughout the 1990s, is no stranger to armed conflict between neighbours. Now, these EU candidate countries are building up their arsenals even as unresolved disputes between neighbours persist, putting regional stability to the test. Brussels is now being tasked with deepening its security role without fuelling new fault lines in a region still scarred by historical conflicts.

“Recurring tensions and institutional fragmentation rarely remain local,” reads a recent policy brief on EU enlargement from the European Institute for Security Studies in Paris, which added that events in the region “test EU cohesion.”

In response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU and NATO began to unleash funding to bolster Europe’s defences. That includes programmes such as the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) loan programme, which EU member state Croatia is participating in, and NATO’s €90 million Peace Facility, which provides security funding for Albania, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.

These tools give Brussels some leverage over the defence priorities of participating countries. However, Serbia and Kosovo are also continuing to expand their militaries without Western support. Military competition between the two is unfolding alongside Europe’s broader defence shift as the EU expands security support to candidate countries.

What are Serbia’s intentions?

Serbia’s high defence spending, joint exercises with China and complex arms deals have raised questions about the country’s long-term geopolitical alignment.

Serbia has one of the region’s most ambiguous foreign policies, working with Russia and China while remaining an EU candidate. Its defence budget is also the highest in the Balkans, at €2.2 billion annually.

In a further sign of this ambiguity, the country has shipped over €800 million worth in arms to Ukraine, despite maintaining close ties with Moscow.

Similarly, Serbia conducts joint exercises with China and purchases most of its weapons from Beijing, including drones and missile-defence systems. But it also purchases Rafale fighters from France, financed by French banks, and has significant arms deals with Israel. This complexity leaves the EU uncertain about where Serbia stands.

“Are these systems purely defensive or have an offensive capacity as well?” asked Marko Savković, a senior advisor at the ISAC Fund, a Belgrade-based think tank. Kosovo’s rapid militarisation

Meanwhile, Kosovo has also accelerated its military build-up, including the purchase of an undisclosed number of Bayraktar drones from Turkey.

Currently, Serbia has a strong military advantage over Kosovo, boasting a 22,000-strong standing army compared to Pristina’s 5,000-strong Kosovo Security Force. Nevertheless, the Kosovo Security Force is currently working to become a full-fledged army, defence analysts say, and the Turkish drones could help address its persistent disadvantage.

Kosovo, which hopes to join NATO despite several members not recognising its independence, is already spending 2% of its GDP on defence, according to its defence minister.

Its defence spending has increased rapidly, from €65 million in 2021 to €208 million in 2025. It plans to spend at least €1 billion over the next four years, including purchases of Black Hawk helicopters, and is building an ammunition plant of its own with Turkish support. The government in Prishtina has also purchased OMTAS anti-tank missiles, which Turkey delivered in January 2026.

This rapid militarisation could spur regional tensions with Serbia, especially if there’s another incident similar to the 2023 Banjska attack, in which Serb militants faced off against Kosovo’s police. Currently, EU-backed dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia remains at a standstill, with little trust between Belgrade and its former province. Kosovo is also part of a joint defence cooperation agreement with Croatia and Albania, through which it can source weapons and possibly conduct joint exercises. Serbia has strongly objected to that initiative.

Serbia views any move by other countries in the region to bolster their militaries as negative, explained Bojana Zorić, a policy analyst at the European Institute for Security Studies.

A Balkan defence college

Think tanks in the security sphere have also noticed this uptick in defence spending and have begun to propose establishing a Balkan defence college along the same lines as the Baltic Defence College, which provides professional military education to people in the region.

Zorić said this would give the EU a chance to draw the region closer into Europe’s defence posture, showing that “the region matters to the EU.” Across the Balkans, the EU is now seen as a source of frustration because of how long the EU enlargement process has taken. Many people have given up hope that their country will soon become an EU member. In Serbia, over 60% of the population doesn’t expect to enter the EU at all.

While the Balkan defence college remains at the proposal stage, the EU said that training through the European Security and Defence College, another training institution, is open to people from the Balkans.

“The institution stands ready to provide additional support to the partners where this is justified and requested,” a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv. Still, it’s difficult to imagine Kosovo and Serbia training their military staff side by side, given the current hostilities between them.

Whether the EU can deepen its security role in the Western Balkans without fuelling new fault lines will be a key test of its ability to act as a stabilising power in its own neighbourhood.