diplomacy
EU top meeting with Western Balkans begins in Albania
People cross Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit (Boulevard of Martyrs) in Albania’s capital Tirana. photo
© Andreea Alexandru/AP/dpa
States like Russia and China are vying for influence in the Balkans. The EU is trying to counteract this. Are money and symbols enough?
The heads of state and government of the 27 EU countries are meeting today with their colleagues from Serbia and the other Western Balkan countries. One of the topics of the summit in the Albanian capital, Tirana, is dealing with Russia.
So far, Serbia has not joined the EU sanctions over Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and continues to maintain relatively close ties with the government in Moscow. All Western Balkan countries are actually striving for EU membership, but are at different stages in the process. In addition to Albania and Serbia, it is about North Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Kosovo.
Contrary to an earlier announcement, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wants to travel to the summit meeting. “If I didn’t go there, maybe it wouldn’t be of any use, it would cause great damage to our country,” he told journalists yesterday on the sidelines of a military exercise near Belgrade.
Dispute over Kosovan prime minister
Vucic initially canceled his participation on Friday. The reason he gave was his outrage at the Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti. On the same day, he had entrusted an ethnic Serb with a ministerial post who does not have Vucic’s trust. The government in Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo, which has been independent since 2008 and used to belong to Serbia.
For many EU countries, the topic of illegal migration is particularly important alongside Russia at the meeting in Tirana. Significantly more people have recently come to the European Union via the Western Balkans. According to the EU border protection agency Frontex, 22,300 illegal border crossings were counted in October alone – almost three times as many as in the same period last year. And these are just the documented cases.
The EU Commission therefore presented an action plan yesterday, which provides for closer cooperation with the states in the region. Above all, the EU is calling on the Balkan states to align their visa policies with those of the European Union. So far, people from India have been able to travel to Serbia without a visa, from where they recently increasingly traveled to the EU and applied for asylum there. As a first concession, Serbia had recently lifted the visa exemption for travelers from Tunisia and Burundi.
A voluntary declaration between telecom companies from the EU and the Western Balkans is to be signed on the sidelines of the summit – with the prospect of reducing roaming charges for travelers from October 2023. By 2027, additional costs for cell phone use are to be completely eliminated.
prevent Russia’s influence
In principle, the EU wants to tie the Western Balkan countries closer to itself and encourage them to carry out further reforms, which should eventually lead to accession to the European Union. There is also financial support in the billions. In this way, the EU also wants to prevent other states such as Russia or China from gaining further influence in the region.
Among other things, they try to create dependencies through major investments. In many places in the European Union, this is viewed with great concern – especially since the Balkan states are located in the middle of the EU and border on member countries such as Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Croatia.
Nevertheless, there is disagreement within the EU as to whether the procedures for EU enlargement should be accelerated in view of Moscow’s and Beijing’s attempts to exert influence. At the moment, none of the Western Balkan countries has a specific timeline for accession. The EU has been conducting accession negotiations with Montenegro and Serbia since 2012 and 2014 respectively, and this process started this year with Albania and North Macedonia. The EU Commission recently recommended candidate status for Bosnia-Herzegovina. So far, Kosovo has only been a potential candidate for accession.
authoritarian tendencies
Over the past few years, the rapprochement process has basically come to a standstill. The state of democracy and the rule of law is causing concern in many places. Serbia in particular is now seen as more autocratic, more repressive and more destabilizing for the region than it was ten years ago. In Bosnia – under the destructive influence of Belgrade – the political actors are blocking each other and Montenegro is in danger of falling completely under the influence of Serbia. But even in the clearly pro-Western countries of Albania and Kosovo, the political leaders have recently been conspicuous for their authoritarian tendencies.
Because the Western Balkans summit in Tirana is the first meeting of its kind in the region, EU Council President Charles Michel spoke in advance of a “very symbolic” event. For Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is expected in the Albanian capital.