Standards of living in the six economies of the Western Balkans are well below those in the European Union (EU). The gap is closing gradually, but a full catch-up could, on current trends, take 70 years or more. The fundamental problem is low productivity in the economy, a result of many years of under-investment, weak institutions, unfavourable demographics and a difficult business environment. In this paper, we use the EBRD’s assessment of transition qualities (ATQ) framework to identify areas where the region lags far behind EU comparators, and we propose a number of concrete policy improvements that, if adopted, would speed up the rate of convergence.