Financial Times: EU with membership plan for six Balkan states

A European Commission document to be published Tuesday sets target for what will be the bloc's biggest expansion in two decades

The European Union will hold the prospect of membership of six Western Balkan countries by 2025, when it is thought to take a breath of Union enlargement, to strengthen its control over migration, and countering Russian influence in the unstable region.

A European Commission document to be published Tuesday sets the goal for what will be the bloc's biggest expansion in two decades.

The prospect of future membership, though distant, has long been a push for reforms and peace in the region, following the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

But, “enlargement fatigue”, following the 2008 financial crisis and the Eurozone debt problems, and the vote from Great Britain to exit the EU, formerly a Union enlargement follower has cast doubt on this prospect.

“Financial Times” writes that strategists in the EU fear Russia is expanding its influence zone in the region, where there are traditional allies.

It is noted, as the paper points out, that the Kremlin has begun in cynical form to comment on promises, which the EU offers to Western Balkan countries regarding membership by imposing itself as <x0 alternative>”.

A considerable number of people in the region believe they will never join the EU,” said Florian Bieber, a specialist in Southeast Europe at the University of Graz.

But Bieber said there was a chance that the EU strategic document, followed by the Sofia summit, could start convincing Western Balkan states hoping that membership in the future will still remain.

No doubt, Bulgaria, which holds the rotating EU presidency in the first half of this year and Austria, which will pursue it in the second six months, have a priority.

While many EU member states, including the youngest in Central and Eastern Europe, are pro-enlargement, Western Balkan territories can find objections from some of the powerful countries.

Spain has historically refused to recognise Kosovo as an independent state due to concerns about possible implications for Catalan status.

The new Brussels plan will be presented to the European Commission on February 6th when the EU would be needed, according to earlier warnings, to present its plan for the Western Balkans. It is expected that the new plan will be approved, writes the paper “Financial Times”.

“in some way, six states are not foreigners, they are already inside and we need them to”, an EU diplomat said regarding enlargement.

This is why we should reactivate the enlargement process”, he added.

The commission is also expected to call on the six Western Balkan countries to resolve outstanding bilateral disputes and fight corruption.

Serbia and Montenegro, which have already begun EU accession talks, are viewed as the two most likely Western Balkan candidates, ahead of Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The postponement of enlargement is an effort to secure a promise made in September by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to expand the membership of the 28 members after leaving Britain. Juncker is expected to visit the Western Balkans next month.

The EU began accession talks with Montenegro in 2012, and with Serbia two years later, while Macedonia and Albania are awaiting the Commission's recommendations to start negotiations.

Juncker said in November that he expected Serbia and Montenegro to be EU members by 2025.

The Western Balkans have increasingly returned to the EU as one of the main migration routes that helped create a crisis in 2015-16, when more than 2.5 million people sought asylum in the bloc.