The European Union is set to advance expansion plans at its annual EU-Western Balkans summit on Friday, with hosts Montenegro leading a list of six candidate countries.
EU expansion is seen by Brussels as a response to new geopolitical challenges including security and economic threats posed by Russia and China and an increasing ambivalence — bordering on hostility — towards the bloc from the United States.
The summit is the first to bring together EU leaders since the electoral defeat of Viktor Orban, Hungary‘s former Moscow-friendly prime minister who, during his 16-year tenure, flouted the EU’s standards on democracy and the rule of law and forged close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other autocrats.
The gathering in the picturesque port of Tivat on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast is being attended by European leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
They are joined by the heads of EU candidate countries including, in addition to hosts Montenegro: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.
The six nations are expected to sign up to a new Franco-German initiative aimed at injecting fresh “momentum” into the accession process by creating incentives for faster reforms.
The incentives, according to a proposal seen by the dpa news agency, include privileged access to the EU single market and the possibility of sending observers to EU institutions.
“For us, the enlargement, namely to the Western Balkans, is the most important geopolitical investment that the European Union is doing,” said European Council President Antonio Costa in Belgrade, Serbia, on Thursday during a tour of the region ahead of the summit.
“It is not just an opportunity; it is a geostrategic necessity for Europe. And for this we need to work harder and faster,” he added.
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Montenegro: the EU’s next member state?
Of the six Western Balkan candidates, Montenegro is seen as the frontrunner, having been pursuing membership for 22 years.
The small, mountainous nation of 623,000 people adopted the euro as its de facto currency as early as 2002, declared independence from the union with Serbia in 2006, and joined NATO in 2017.
With public support for accession reportedly at around 80%, Montenegro describes itself as the “epicenter of Euro-optimism” and is aiming to become the EU’s 28th member state by 2028.
“The summit in Tivat is the most significant and largest international event in modern Montenegro,” President Jakov Milatovic wrote in an op-ed published by local media earlier this week, stating: “Montenegro as the 28th member of the European Union by 2028 is a task we must complete.”
And after progress on economic and democratic reforms recently prompted the EU’s enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, to flag the possibility of completing technical negotiations by the end of the year, that timeline appears realistic.
Among the other Western Balkan countries, Albania is also seen as a promising candidate, but Kosovo’s path to EU membership remains the most complicated, with five EU member states still refusing to recognize its independence from Serbia.
Belgrade’s own route to accession also remains problematic given its close political ties to Russia and economic ties to China. EU enlargement commissioner Kos recently singled out Serbia for democratic “backsliding” under populist president Aleksandar Vucic.
What is Germany’s position?
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is keen to incentivize Western Balkan nations to remain committed to their EU accession plans and discourage them from entering into economic partnerships with Russia and China out of frustration in the meantime.
The incentives are also designed to compensate candidate countries for what some see as preferential treatment afforded to Ukraine, for which Merz has proposed an accelerated “associated membership” or “EU membership light” — even though this falls short of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy‘s demands for full membership.
“Merz wants Kyiv to gain a newly defined status of associate membership,” reports DW’s Michaela Küfner, who is accompanying the German delegation to Montenegro. “Despite Ukraine’s insistence on full status fast, this is a lot more — and much faster —– than any Balkan country. Faster EU market access and observer status in EU institutions are designed to compensate for Ukraine’s preferential treatment.”
The chairman of Germany’s parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, David McAllister (CDU), told the dpa news agency this week that Berlin was determined to avoid “dangerous gray zones” in the Balkans in which other global powers could exploit the absense of a strong EU presence,
“Stability in the Balkans means stability for all of Europe,” he said, referring to lessons from history with major conflicts (the First World War 1914-1918 and the Balkan wars of the 1990s) having had their roots in the region.
“We can provide economic, financial and political support but, in the end, the necessary reforms must be passed by national governments and parliaments,” McAllister stressed.
Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko
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