This week the European Commission adopted its annual enlargement reports. Regardless of the diagnostic value of the individual country reports, taken together they highlight the stubborn absence of a proper strategy. Enlargement policy remains reactive and procedural. The leadership deficit in the EU is reflected in the gravitation toward technocratic adjustments. Bigger-picture geopolitical interests are poorly prioritized, while the technical and procedural dominate in political vacuums.
In Albania and Serbia, the EU failed to use the opening provided by citizen mobilization to push for democratic change while protests were still peaceful. As a result, citizens of these countries don’t feel vested in an accession process that remains in the hands of incumbent elites.
The lukewarm, borderline hostile attitude of some EU member states towards enlargement reinforces the sense of drift, with uncertainty hanging over the ratification of Montenegro’s accession treaty, which the Commission wants to table by next summer.
At the same time, there is a feeling that the EU is now focused entirely on the frontrunners – Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine – and has no sense of how to advance the process for the laggards. North Macedonia and Kosovo remain completely blocked by the EU, while ruling elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina see no advantage in moving towards EU integration since this would undermine their business model. The EU, meanwhile, pretends that the policy is delivering and that no change is required beyond the platitudes of “gradual integration” – pre-accession participation in certain policies and programs.
Once again, as so often before, the annual reports represent a missed opportunity for the Commission to grapple with the real-world results of its policies, which remain on autopilot.
Finally, the reports demonstrate the Commission’s persistence of viewing the candidate area, particularly the six countries of the Western Balkans, primarily through the enlargement lens – rather than as an integral part of a Europe+ which is besieged by hostile geopolitical actors east and west, as well as enemies of democracy within. The EU’s narrow approach to the Western Balkans region is self-crippling, eschewing non-enlargement tools (like security mandates) to affect the calculus of retrograde actors near and far – and their latitude for action.
This is a manifestation of the EU’s lack of awareness of its need to serve as a core actor in coalescing a Europe+ of democratic middle powers, something that remains pressing in spite of the election results in the US. There is little hope that the EU will pull the right lessons from the results of the midterm elections in the US. While the results are welcome in terms of citizen demands for accountability, checks and balances and a rejection of politics centered on elite interests, the situation in the US will remain fluid.
What the EU needs to do instead of its current approach is to further empower citizens in the region to challenge the status quo and generate new potential for progress. Member states should take the next step from the Commission’s diagnostics to finally conduct a policy review on how the EU managed to squander its leverage so consistently for two decades. It should be aimed at integrating enlargement into a wider Europe+ strategy based only on a full strategic review of what is needed to ensure a more effective comprehensive security umbrella for Europe.
Absent a catalytic values infusion from member states, this flatlining drift is likely to continue. One hopes European citizens take inspiration from the bottom-up mobilization on both sides of the Atlantic to compel sclerotic elites to shift out of neutral.
