EU expansion depends on Ireland

TIRANA, Sep 28 – Albania expects that Brussels will soon consider its request for candidate status and that it will also decide next year to give the tiny Balkan country the visa-free regime as it did for the other three regional countries this year.
But much depends on individual European Union member countries, whether they decide to agree to accept more new members from the poorer region of the Balkans.
This week Ireland votes for the second time on the Lisbon Treaty but with a different result expected. In 2008 it gave a “no” to that request. It looks a more pliant creature today. The “yes” camp appears set to carry the day this Friday.
Another Irish “no” could scupper the Lisbon Treaty for good and throw a mighty spoke into the wheels of the EU chariot. A “yes” vote, on the other hand, leaves the Tories looking isolated in Europe in their opposition to ratification.
Since 2004, when Romania and Bulgaria were admitted, the EU has thrown the equivalent of a large blanket over east and south-east Europe but with a huge hole in the middle, covering the former Yugoslavia and Albania.
Some of these states have few hopes of membership in the short term. Others, such as Croatia and the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, obtained EU-candidate status years ago but cannot move forward on accession until the row over Lisbon is resolved.
There is nothing to prevent the EU from expanding eastwards if the Lisbon treaty fails to gain general assent – but it won’t happen. “No expansion without Lisbon” has become a mantra in some EU countries, especially Germany.
This is unfortunate, because the continued existence of a kind of black hole to the west of the EU’s eastern border with Ukraine and Turkey makes this region a magnet for traffickers. It also renders the EU’s external border so complex that policing it becomes almost impossible.
Speaking at an international event in the United States Javier Solana, the EU commissioner did make what one senior Harvard professor of government called “a surprisingly candid remark” about the probability of Albania’s admission: while many of its Balkan neighbors were not soon likely to become part of NATO, he said, Albania had, against expectations, managed to join the alliance.