TIRANA, May 12, 2022 – A proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron to build a new political community of non-EU members around the bloc is raising red flags in the Western Balkans, where there are concerns the new organization could be used as an alternative to full membership.
Macron said Monday that rather than bringing down stringent standards to allow countries to join more quickly, a parallel entity could be built for democratic former Soviet states, the Western Balkans and the likes of the United Kingdom, which voted to leave the EU.
“It is our historic obligation … to create what I would describe before you today as a European political community,” Macron said. “This new European organization would allow democratic European nations … to find a new space for political cooperation, security, cooperation in energy, transport, investment, infrastructure, the movement of people.”
But in the Western Balkan states, which were promised full membership two decades ago and have been waiting patiently and implementing tough reforms with the aim of full membership in the EU, Macron’s proposal is likely not seen as positive.
Albert Rakipi, chairman of the Albanian Institute for International Studies, said he believes that the governments of the Western Balkans should reject Macron’s idea.
“I see this idea as surprising and hard to explain at a time when we were expecting deep reflection following Russia’s aggression in Ukraine — an EU that would be more united in its foreign policy offering concrete enlargement steps in the Western Balkans,” Rakipi told Tirana Times.
He added that the EU integration has been for the countries of the Western Balkans a state-building project striving for good governance and democratic societies.
“To give up now on the EU’s enlargement policies means abandoning these countries’ European integration process and the state building process that goes with it. And this is being done in a time when insecurity and populism are on the rise as is a trend of more authoritarianism in the region,” Rakipi added.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has radically changed the narrative and positions within the EU. It has become clear that the EU, if it wants to survive and become a geostrategic player, must embark on a path of federalization that is on deeper integration, according to Sonja Biserko of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia.
“At the same time, the EU policy towards the Western Balkans has emerged once again inconsistent. Blocking the EU enlargement will have dire consequences on the Balkans. Western Balkans must be protected from the malign Russian influence and helped to finally build their future within the EU,” Biserko told Tirana Times.
For Genc Pollo, a former Albanian member of parliament who previously led Albania’s national EU integration council, the proposal is not helpful for the Western Balkans.
“The hope with the EU integration process was that its transformational impact would help post-communist applicant countries consolidate the rule of law, democracy, human freedoms and a market economy. The record here is mixed. The debate has been increasingly geopolitical and less value centric,” Pollo told Tirana Times. “Not a positive development. Now if the aim is to create a non-Atlantic NATO light without necessarily requiring the EU standards this would be a further step in that unhelpful development.”
Bodo Weber, a Balkans expert and senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council in Berlin, sees the idea presented by the French president more as a tendency to stifle the enlargement process.
“I think what he [Emmanuel Macron] is proposing here in principle, [is] an alternative to the EU enlargement process even though he has avoided saying that. He is ready to find a format that would eliminate the issue of EU enlargement,” Weber told RFE.
Weber said it is clear that within the EU countries there are major disagreements regarding the further enlargement of the bloc.
Toby Vogel, an analyst and expert on the EU and the Western Balkans based in Brussels, believes that President Macron’s idea will not be supported by the bloc countries. In addition to describing the proposal as vague and very vague, Vogel says that Macron through this idea reveals the opposition he has in relation to the membership of new states in the EU.
“It is clear that [EU] enlargement is not going anywhere, certainly not for the Western Balkans, and one of the reasons for that is President [Emmanuel] Macron. He was the one who blocked, for example, the opening of membership negotiations with Northern Macedonia and Albania,” Vogel told RFE.
There hasn’t been any official reaction by regional governments yet, but with all six states in varying degrees of seeking full EU membership, it is unlikely the plan will be looked at favorably.
Inside the EU, proponents of enlargement are also likely not to want it to be a primary option for the Western Balkans, but the stance of large countries like Germany will also be very important.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed the matter in a meeting with Macron, calling it “a very interesting proposal for dealing with the big challenge we face.”
But he said the EU shouldn’t stop pursuing the accession processes for those countries where it has already begun, citing as an example North Macedonia, whose leaders had taken “very brave” decisions in recent years.
“We should find a way that this bravery isn’t disappointed,” Scholz said.
