Last September, Zhang Wewei, an international relations professor at China’s Fudan University, remarked that it was open to question “whether the European Union can even survive until 2035.” For Europeans, it was an uncomfortable reminder that the world’s largest powers regard the EU, and Europe more generally, as a spent force. China sees Europe as divided and ineffective; Russia sees it as decadent and hypocritical; the US sees it as at risk of “civilizational erasure”. All view Europe as militarily weak and economically stagnant.

Some of these assessments, though exaggerated, contain painful truths. But there is one policy area where the Europeans have it within their power to shape events to their advantage. This is the project of EU enlargement.

Expanding the 27-nation union eastwards is imperative for Europe’s security and prosperity. Failure to enlarge will leave the countries that wish to join the EU vulnerable to internal tensions and external interference. That, in turn, will undermine the security of the continent as a whole. Encouragingly, both the EU and some candidate countries are at last thinking about enlargement in terms creative enough to make it possible to bring many aspiring members under the EU umbrella as soon as five years from now.

Of the 10 countries that are in principle candidates, some have better prospects than others. Turkey’s membership bid exists on paper only; Georgia’s is on ice because of democratic backsliding and anti-EU tendencies in Tbilisi. Ukraine’s chances rest heavily on the outcome of Russia’s war of aggression; Moldova keeps its hopes alive, but is a long way from fulfilling the entry criteria. The region that the EU can and should make a priority is the western Balkans, where six countries – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – are candidates.

After Croatia joined the EU in 2013, the bloc’s enthusiasm for western Balkan enlargement waned. It picked up after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The country moving most quickly to membership is Montenegro, which in January closed the 13th of 33 negotiating chapters required for entry. The European Commission said last November that Montenegro was on track to complete its accession talks by the end of this year.

Since 2022, however, the reinvigorated enlargement process has been dogged by difficulties. Three stand out. The first is that resistance and skepticism about enlargement are strong in some EU political parties and societies. Especially in western Europe, the political and economic costs of enlargement seem high and the rewards doubtful.

The second is that the EU will require far-reaching reforms to its institutional and financial arrangements, if it is to accommodate six or more new members. The EU has been reluctant to grasp this nettle as it battles with other problems such as low growth, troubled public finances, the war in Ukraine and rocky relations with the US.

The third is the lack of capacity or willingness of some candidate countries to undertake the reforms deemed necessary by the EU to qualify for full membership. This applies to the economic sphere but also to the quality of democracy and the rule of law.

Taken together, these obstacles create the risk that enlargement may become paralysed, as it was between 2013 and 2022. A particular problem is that any candidate country’s entry must be unanimously approved by the EU’s 27 governments and then ratified by each country in line with its constitutional requirements, which in some cases may mean a referendum.

There is a way, however, to overcome these difficulties. It was outlined in late February in a joint initiative of Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s president, and Edi Rama, Albania’s prime minister. Recognising the hurdles to full EU membership, the two leaders proposed instead that candidate countries should be permitted in the near future to become part of the EU’s single market and visa-free Schengen travel zone – two key privileges of joining the club.

Such ideas have already been circulating in Brussels as well as Berlin and Paris. The arguments in their favour are twofold. First, economic integration would benefit both the western Balkans and existing EU countries. Second, the new approach would sidestep awkward issues such as changing the composition of the European Commission, adding members to the European Parliament, altering voting arrangements in the EU and, above all, granting veto rights to new members.

At present, one country can block collective EU action on matters such as foreign policy and taxation by wielding a veto. Hungary’s repeated use of its veto with regard to the Ukraine war has made other EU countries nervous about future paralysis if six or more countries entered the bloc, all with veto rights. The Vucic-Rama initiative seeks to allay these fears.

The new proposal should not be taken as a substitute for full EU membership, which must remain the longer-term objective for the western Balkans. Nor will it be straightforward for all the region’s countries to meet the conditions even for single market entry; much hard work on reforms is still needed.

The new proposal should not be taken as a substitute for full EU membership, which must remain the longer-term objective for the western Balkans. Although new research shows that the WB6 are roughly where other candidates were on accession; much hard work on reforms will still be needed.

However, as a matter of practical politics, full EU membership will likely remain elusive in the near future, entrenching instability in a region of Europe where the EU can least afford it. The best way forward is to implement the Vucic-Rama plan, demonstrating to people both in the western Balkans and in the EU that a shared future is to their mutual benefit.

https://eualive.net/the-vucic-rama-eu-enlagement-initiative-should-be-taken-seriously/

*Tony Barber is a long-serving Europe editor and columnist at the Financial Times, specialising in European politics and international affairs. He contributed this op-ed to EUalive, to which ADN has a collaboration partnership.