An EU candidate country since 2012, Serbia is an important partner in the Western Balkans. The 2020 iteration of the Digital Evolution Scorecard
characterised Serbia as a ‘break out’ economy,
meaning that despite a relative lack of digital infrastructure the country is rapidly digitalising; internet penetration is one of the highest across the region,
standing at 79%. Over the past decade, Serbia’s digital policy has been focused on attracting foreign investment, deepening the digital transformation across the public and private sectors, and promoting economic growth in line with EU targets. These objectives have been operationalised through a series of strategies, notably the
Strategy for the Development of Information Security for the period 2017-2020 and the
Strategy for combat against cyber crime 2019-2023. The ITU
notes, however, that “while innovative, internet-based e-commerce is expected to bring significant growth and development, obsolete legislation and a lack of harmonisation with EU standards and best practice persist, hampering progress”. As the country becomes increasingly more digitalised, the challenge for Serbian cyber diplomacy will be to develop and enhance avenues of European, regional, and international cooperation.
In recent years, Bosnia and Herzegovina has seen a consistent
increase in the rate of Internet absorption along with a continuous extension of broadband access across urban and rural areas. As a potential EU candidate country, Bosnia has recently developed a burgeoning drive to advance the country’s digital and cyber capabilities in line with those of the European Union; ‘smart growth’ is notably included as one of the national priorities under the 2015
Strategic Framework. That said, the institutional, regulatory, and operational framework that would enable the realisation of this ambition is still nascent and the progress in many policy areas is undermined by the complexity of
the distribution of powers between the central government and two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. In 2017, Bosnia formally adopted the Policy of Electronic Communications of Bosnia and Herzegovina 2017-2021, which is largely aligned with the Digital Agenda of Europe [
x]. This vision of a Bosnian digital society is a key milestone for the country’s emerging cyber diplomatic apparatus as it clearly identifies the foundational pillars of the country’s ICT ecosystem, which in turn will assist in bringing it into closer alignment with European cyber priorities.