Petty nationalism aside, many a citizen of the Balkans would feel comfortable with the Bulgarian government’s plea for the European Union’s help in running their country (“A New Colonialism,” March 21, 2009). Under this proposal, hatched by the prime minister’s advisers, the Union would get more power to intervene where “weaknesses may be qualified as structural and persistent,” and thus unlikely to be resolved by the Bulgarian government “alone.” Worries over corruption, organized crime, and slow judicial reform spell out not only distrust in Balkan governments, but also a wish of their peoples that the Union would help run things a bit more directly. After all, that is the main reason for support of Union membership in the countries still out of its borders in the Western Balkans. As the economic crisis deepens, the threat of ever more corruption, organized crime, and judicial mismanagement grows, making the Bulgarian neocolonial idea ever more appealing across the region.