Your main leader and your briefing on ex-Communist economies warn that the European Union is in grave danger in view of the spreading economic crisis among its newest members to the east (“The Bill that could Break Up Europe” and “The Whiff of Contagion,” February 28, 2009). In brief, Western Europe is damned if it bails out Eastern Europe, most of which had badly mismanaged the boom following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it is damned if it does not. In either case, Eastern Europe may take the European Union down with it. The danger you describe is real, but it is even more real in a region that you have left out of your analysis altogether: Western Balkans. This is Eastern Europe’s weakest spot. The gathering economic gloom together with all sorts of problems left unattended since the breakup of Yugoslavia conspire to make precisely this region central to the Union’s bailout. If the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone is not ceased now, the conundrum will only grow. And the Union may well crumble in view of the consequences, of which the economic ones will be the most benign.