Thewesternbalkans
Currently, ten countries in Europe are participating in the EU enlargement process, nine of which have the status of candidate countries. Each of them has problems with its neighbors – historical, political, border or of another nature.
The next expansion will be with countries that have status or sovereignty issues not resolved by the UN, US or the EU in the 1990s or later, when they had stronger leverage. Now these problems must be solved in a very different geopolitical environment.
State sovereignty issues between Kosovo and Serbia remain difficult to resolve. There are also old bilateral problems and disputes between accession candidates and EU member states, such as the blocking by Greece and Bulgaria of the accession of North Macedonia, as well as the recent new crisis between Greece and Albania. However, European politicians and experts agree that the complexity of Kosovo-Serbia relations is incomparable to other bilateral disputes in the region.
The challenges of complex interstate disputes in the Western Balkans are blurring the integration perspective in the region. These bilateral political problems, or the so-called “bilateralization” of the accession process in Brussels bureaucratic circles, are among the reasons for the delay in the enlargement of some of the countries of the Western Balkans.
For example, Bulgaria, which refers to the decision of the European Council from June 2022, states that the problem between Bulgaria and North Macedonia is no longer between the two countries, but between North Macedonia and the EU. The so-called “French proposal” (because it comes during the French presidency of the Council of the EU) is actually an EU project that proposes the following: that the Bulgarian conditions before Skopje become part of the commitments of North Macedonia before Brussels, i.e. part of the negotiating framework. The main request is the inclusion in the preamble of the North Macedonian constitution of the citizens who live within the borders of the state and are part of other nations, such as the Bulgarians. Sofia categorically rejects the thesis of comparing the dispute between North Macedonia and Bulgaria with the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia or the situation with the candidacies of Ukraine and Moldova.
The new centre-right VMRO-DPMNE government in North Macedonia has rejected the previous centre-left government’s compromise on changes to the country’s constitution and is demanding that the EU ensure that Bulgaria does not set new conditions in the accession process. Skopje proposes that the constitutional changes take effect after the country’s accession to the EU.
Greece overturned its veto on Macedonia joining NATO and the European Union only after it changed its name to Republic of North Macedonia in 2018. However, the new authorities in Skopje (president and government) began to annoy Athens by not using the agreed new name of the country. Athens, for its part, is threatening to block North Macedonia’s EU accession process again if it does not respect the letter and spirit of the Prespa Agreement that ended the name dispute.
In 2023, Athens threatened Tirana with preventing Albania’s EU integration when a Greek expatriate in Albania, elected mayor by the country’s minority Greek party affiliated with the opposition coalition, was arrested on suspicion of vote-buying during local elections in Albania. This comes in the context of a long-running dispute between the two countries over maritime boundaries, which is yet to be decided by an international tribunal. Greece has threatened to withdraw its support for Albania’s EU membership and over the issue of Chameria, an area in Greece it calls Epirus, from which Albanians were forcibly evicted between 1913 and 1944.
In Podgorica, there are also concerns that obstacles in the accession process may arise along the lines of the political will of their neighbor Croatia. Zagreb was irritated that a resolution was passed in the Montenegrin parliament regarding the Jasenovac concentration camp, established by the Croatian Ustasha in 1941. Zagreb can take advantage of its position as an EU member state in resolving issues related to Montenegro’s accession.
Hungary, Poland or Romania may also be tempted by their advantage as member states in relation to the eastern candidate countries – Ukraine and Moldova. Numerous historical, territorial and linguistic disputes are simmering in the region.
The behavior of Greece and Bulgaria is indicative of the way in which member states can influence the accession process. Greece’s disputes with North Macedonia and Albania, as well as the dispute between Bulgaria and North Macedonia, existed long before the beginning of the accession process, and the EU set conditions for the candidate countries. There are many different opinions as to whether these conditions are related to the Copenhagen criteria or not. Precisely because of their status as members, these countries have the opportunity to influence the European Council, the decision-making procedure and the formation of consensus. This should be taken into account by the EC, because otherwise there will be many more blockages in the process and we will not soon see new members if the issues of this “bilateralization” are not resolved.
A large number of bilateral problems exist among the Western Balkan countries themselves, which may also hinder their accession to the EU. The Western Balkans Growth Plan therefore provides for safeguards to prevent deadlocks due to bilateral disputes between Western Balkan countries. The plan stipulates, for example, that no Western Balkan country can block another country’s progress in the process of accessing the EU’s single market. There is also a specific clause requiring Serbia and Kosovo to demonstrate a constructive commitment to the normalization of bilateral relations to allow the implementation of these new financial instruments.
“Bilateralization” is one of the key problems in the EU. It has been discussed for a long time whether the introduction of qualified majority voting (QMV – Qualified majority voting) will reduce the pressure of member countries on candidate countries. According to some European experts, the EU itself produces asymmetric power relations between member states and candidate countries, which are likely to remain in the future, as member states tend to politicize and “Europeanize” bilateral disputes.
Candidate countries, for their part, complain that they are subjected to pressure from member countries that is not necessarily related to the Copenhagen criteria. However, the Western Balkans are not a laboratory where Brussels can increase or decrease the pressure for their development at its discretion. The peoples of the Western Balkans are disheartened by more than 10 years of being in the “waiting room” of accession and the failure of EU policy.
Therefore, in European structures, eyes are on the EC in anticipation of developing a toolkit, including diplomatic and economic means, to help resolve bilateral disputes between candidates and members and between member countries themselves. If these disputes are not resolved, there will be no enlargement, argue experts from the Brussels middle echelon.
However, the transfer of responsibility to the EC is too wishful thinking and it offers too few new ideas. When faced with problems, Brussels always postpones difficult decisions until later, which makes it very difficult to create a single and universally valid mechanism for solving bilateral disputes. Added to this is the current lack of institutional reforms in the union, which should prepare it for the accession of several more countries – reforming the institutions and decision-making procedures, changes in common policies (cohesion, agrarian and others), the budget of EU for enlargement and improving the rule of law.
