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.
