Leaders of European Union countries, including gathered in the picturesque port of Tivat on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast for the annual EU-Western Balkans summit, with expanding the bloc topping the agenda.
After the summit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was optimistic about a Franco-German initiative aimed at injecting fresh “momentum” into the accession process by creating incentives for faster reforms.
Host Montenegro leads a list of six candidate countries, which also includes Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.
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 towards the bloc from the United States.
EU enlargement must be ‘faster’
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU needed to make the “enlargement process faster and more credible.”
“Enlargement is for us a geostrategic imperative, as well as a long-term investment in our peace, our stability and our security,” von der Leyen said, adding that the accession process had to “become more dynamic.”
The process of becoming a EU member state takes many years, with candidates required to fulfill institutional and governance requirements in a multi-staged process.
The Franco-Germany plan supported by Merz envisions candidate states being admitted as observers to meetings of EU bodies. Merz said other incentives could include advanced integration into the Euro payment area, or inclusion in single-rate cross-border data roaming.
The German chancellor said the people of the Western Balkan countries should should receive a clear message that they are welcome in the EU.
“We will now launch a gradual process,” Merz said, emphasizing that the process should be accelerated. “There will be no more excuses,” he added.
Ahead of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of the region for the EU for energy and security issues as well as migration routes.
He added a candidate country that aligns itself with the EU on certain criteria would be allowed to join certain bloc formats, like Council meetings.
European Council President Antonio Costa in Belgrade, Serbia, on Thursday during a tour of the region ahead of the summit said enlargement in the Western Balkans “is the most important geopolitical investment that the European Union is doing.”
“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.
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.
Merz cautions Serbia against ‘swinging between Russia, China and Europe’
Belgrade’s own route to accession also remains problematic given its close political ties to Russia and economic ties to China.
During the Tivat summit on Friday, Merz called for Serbia to “clearly decide where it sees its future.”
“There can’t be policy of swinging between Russia, China and Europe,” Merz said at the summit in Montenegro, adding: “When the answer from Serbia is ‘Europe’, then the answer from Europe will be ‘Serbia’”.
Enthusiasm for EU accession has declined in the country in recent years, with surveys showing support under 50%.
EU enlargement commissioner Kos recently singled out Serbia for democratic “backsliding” under populist president Aleksandar Vucic.
Merz keen on incentives
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.
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Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko, Saim Dušan Inayatullah
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