On Nov. 8, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen officially recommended that Ukraine and Moldova open membership negotiations with Brussels soon, upon fulfilling certain criteria. The move is both an expression of commitment to Ukraine and a shot across Russia’s bow. Indeed, EU officials are betting that by anchoring Eastern Europeans—Ukraine and Moldova, as well as the Western Balkans and eventually Georgia, too—ever more solidly in the EU, it can lift them out of the precarious no-man’s-land between the EU and Russia, and thus stabilize the EU’s eastern borders. The best way to expand Europeans’ peace and prosperity, according to von der Leyen, is to lock all liberal-minded states from the Baltics to the Balkans into the institutions and structures of democratic Europe. “Enlargement is a vital policy for the European Union,” she said. “Completing our union is the call of history. … We all win.”
But the gambit could backfire if Brussels proves as uneven as it has in the Western Balkans, where the enlargement process has ground on for 20 years—and even triggered a backlash in countries that have become frustrated and disappointed as a result of unfulfilled promises despite many years of imperfect but hard-won reforms. These unfortunate countries not only remain outside of the EU, but some are run by national populists who are moving in the other direction and forging alliances with the EU’s geopolitical rivals, including Russia and Turkey. Given the complexities of integrating the likes of Ukraine and Moldova, it’s easy to imagine them experiencing the same treatment from the EU—and rousing the same kind of backlash in response.
In the early 2000s, the EU opened the enlargement process to all of the Western Balkan countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. But two decades later, only Croatia has joined—the blame for which lies at the feet both of the aspiring countries and the EU itself. An array of internal issues and bilateral spats between the countries have obstructed them from fulfilling all of the obligations of membership, including standards of democracy, rule of law, and human rights. Serbia has long-standing rule of law and corruption issues that have become worse after initially getting better, and its fraught relationship with Kosovo complicates its status all the more. Likewise, Kosovo has Serbia blocking its way, as well as the fact that several EU states refuse to recognize its independence. Bosnia and Herzegovina is highly unstable, the postwar peace accords having divided a country that mostly observes the peace but can’t move forward with reform.
The fact that Albania, Montenegro, and North Macedonia are basically ready to go—and have been for years now—illustrates that much of the problem lies with the EU itself. In the wake of accepting Romania and Bulgaria (2007) and Croatia (2013), many member states expressed “enlargement fatigue” and felt that consolidation, not enlargement, was the order of the day—most vocally France, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Of course, in light of the nightmare of the EU’s trials with authoritarian Poland and Hungary, which threw wrenches in its workings, every EU country is wary of new members whose patchy democratic credentials might cause them to do the same. Nor is enlargement a popular stance: In France and Germany, just 35 percent and 42 percent of respondents, respectively, desire enlargement. In Austria, just 29 percent. Rubbing salt in the wounds, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for a European Political Community for like-minded non-EU states that fall short of membership benchmarks (and any interested EU countries)—a purgatory of sorts for loser nations.
The lack of a clear path or concrete timeline has brought momentum on demanding reforms to a standstill and, in some countries, even reversed it. Many of the Western Balkan countries now have potent political forces in their midst that dismiss the EU as hypocritical and its benchmarks as counterproductive. The loss of momentum toward membership has initiated a vicious cycle, argued a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. It stated: “Stalled reform efforts contribute to slow economic growth, which in turn justifies skepticism within the European Union about future enlargement. With membership more of a distant or unachievable prospect, public attention and political focus [in the Balkans] shift toward other areas, making it harder to justify policies required to align with the EU acquis. Thus, greater political space is created for populist candidates or for political leaders to cater to EU competitors, such as China or Russia.”
Today, the region is rife with the detritus of the EU’s failures. There is no better example than Serbia, which applied for EU membership in 2009 and since 2012 has been a candidate for accession—languishing in the waiting room, as it is called. Reforms according to the acquis communautaire have lurched forward only to slide back again. While some critics attribute this to the Serbs’ lack of effort and illiberal political culture, others say the complicated country would have fared much better with a firmer helping hand from Brussels.
Since 2017, the right-wing nationalist Aleksandar Vucic, a onetime ally of former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, served as president, a post from which he pledged alliance to the EU reform process on one day and then praised Russian President Vladimir Putin the next. Although the Serbia of today is a different animal than the one of 20 years ago, largely as a result of the EU processes, it has been slow to address the tough reforms addressing organized crime, rule of law violations, corruption, and judicial independence. This year, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Vucic said, in words that almost every regional leader could utter: “We are not as enthusiastic as we used to be, in a way that European Union is not that enthusiastic about us as we thought it was.” He said he was “pessimistic” about Serbia entering the EU any time soon.
Belgrade’s disillusionment has made it open to overtures from Russia. Moscow bolsters radical nationalist parties and the Orthodox Church, as well as Milorad Dodik, the Serbian nationalist former co-president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In terms of geopolitics, Serbia has undermined the Euro-Atlantic sanctions regime against wartime Russia. Not only does it refuse to implement trade and financial sanctions, but it also imports Russian natural gas. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the situation is much the same.
The EU’s rationale in taking this monumental step with Ukraine and Moldova makes sense on a number of levels. Ukraine has staked its very existence on identifying as a liberal democracy; ultimately, it is the chief reason behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine and his disinclination to relent. A proper democracy aligned with Western Europe rather than Russia undermines the stripe of illiberal, authoritarian state that Russia and its satellites embody and want to perpetuate. Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and tenacious defense of its territory since the Russian invasion in 2022 underscore how serious Ukraine is about its commitment to becoming a Western-style democracy. And this striving has been recognized by the Euro-Atlantic alliance in the form of military and humanitarian aid, international diplomatic engagement, and in June 2022 the award of EU candidate status.
But Ukraine and Moldova will soon have to embark on the tough economic reforms the EU requires—and the challenge of doing so at a time of war. “This is why the European Commission cannot run the process of Ukraine’s accession in the same way for the Western Balkans,” argued Vessela Tcherneva of the think tank European Council on Foreign Relations. “As a country at war, Ukraine’s accession must contain bold and coherent political messaging and larger amounts of funding linked to its reconstruction.”
This recipe must apply to the Western Balkans as well, since the EU can’t leave it festering while granting perks and revamped processes to Ukraine and Moldova. The EU hasn’t lost the Western Balkans yet, but it could, were it not to make amends now. This would mean, among other things, increasing pre-accession EU funds and providing early access to certain policy areas. Most experts agree that a Ukraine at peace and backed wholeheartedly by Brussels could make the grade. Essential is that Ukraine’s reform-minded politicians can convince its citizenry that the hard slog to get there is worth the effort.
Correction, Nov. 17, 2023: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the duration of Aleksandar Vucic’s presidency.
