The European Union in the Western Balkans: It Takes Two to Tangle

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The European Union promised the successor states of the former Yugoslavia and Albania in 2003 that their place was in the European Union. Still, 22 years later, only Slovenia and Croatia have joined, in 2004 and 2013, respectively. The European Union and the states of the Western Balkans blame each other for the sluggish progress on enlargement. The EU agenda is burdened by many other matters and moves from “crisis to crisis” (eurozone, migration, internal discord, insufficient commitment to European defense). It seems never to have time for the Western Balkans, a geographical exclave of the European Union. Being the region’s leading trade partner and investor, the European Union does not feel an urgent need to connect the states with the bond of membership. Nor does it view the creeping presence of various other actors (China, Russia, Türkiye, the Gulf states) as a major challenge. The European Union considers the Western Balkans to have reached negative peace, at least, and thus to be sufficiently stable. The Western Balkan states, with their often sluggish development, backsliding on democracy (Serbia), separatism (Bosnia and Herzegovina), high levels of corruption (Serbia), governmental instability (North Macedonia), public dissent, and absence of comprehensive international recognition (Kosovo), provide the European Union with convenient excuses. However, the European Union is also cautious about repeating past mistakes – integrating states that promise everything during the accession process but deliver very little afterward, thereby eroding cohesion. Such countries cause severe damage to the enlargement process even as they loudly proclaim their support for it.