People smuggling is in the news. The Balkans are not far behind. Here and there, one can read a line such as this one: “The Balkans are now the center of Europe’s people smuggling web.” The same holds for any other sort of smuggling, it goes without saying. Which is why the European Union should have been much more clever about the tricky peninsula ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union and its orbit in Eastern Europe, as well as the breakup of Yugoslavia of old. Anyone with a dash of geopolitical savvy would have pointed at the Balkans as the source of future troubles galore. Watchful but steady integration of all the countries involved into the Union would have helped a great deal, but the vision was sorely lacking. In retrospect, it is a joy to read about the most recent difficulties of the vaunted Union. Its leaders cannot solve the simplest problems that face them, let alone more difficult ones, such as smuggling across the hilly peninsula that has been at the center of many a trouble even in Roman times. It takes a good map to see that much of it looks like Afghanistan, too. Welcome to your own collective stupidity, fellow Europeans!