BRUSSELS, Aug 14 (Balkan View) – Weak rule of law, political pressure on institutions, threats to media freedom, corruption and discrimination remained persistent problems across much of the Balkans in 2025, according to the European Union’s latest global assessment of human rights and democracy.
The European External Action Service’s “2025 Human Rights and Democracy in the World” country reports paint a highly uneven regional picture, ranging from EU member states with established democratic institutions but continuing rights concerns to Western Balkan candidates where institutional weakness and stalled reforms remain central obstacles.
Across the Western Balkans in particular, a common theme emerges: much of the legislation and institutional architecture required to protect fundamental rights exists, but implementation, political independence and accountability frequently lag behind.
Serbia: Polarisation and pressure on civil society
Serbia remained one of the region’s most politically contentious cases.
The EU assessment points to continuing concerns surrounding democratic institutions, freedom of expression, civil society and the broader rule-of-law environment.
Political polarisation and tensions between the authorities, opposition, protesters and civil society remained important features of Serbia’s political landscape.
Media pluralism and journalists’ ability to work without political or economic pressure remain central issues in the country’s democratic development, while Serbia’s EU accession process continues to make fundamental rights and rule-of-law reforms a key benchmark.
Kosovo: Progress alongside persistent political tensions
Kosovo presents a mixed picture.
Its institutional and legal framework provides significant protections for fundamental rights, but implementation remains uneven and relations between Kosovo Serbs and central authorities continue to pose a major challenge.
The protection of non-majority communities, freedom of expression, gender equality and the functioning of democratic institutions remain important areas of EU engagement.
Kosovo nevertheless performs comparatively strongly on some international measures. In the indicators reproduced in the EU assessment, it ranked 59th on the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index and 76th on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
Its media environment presents a different picture: Kosovo ranked 99th on the World Press Freedom Index, substantially below North Macedonia.
Albania: Justice reform advances, but institutional challenges remain
Albania’s long-running justice reforms remain central to the country’s democratic transformation and EU accession process.
The fight against corruption and organised crime, judicial independence, media freedom, property rights and protection against discrimination continue to feature prominently in assessments of the country’s human rights environment.
Albania ranked 80th for press freedom, 87th for rule of law and 91st on the corruption index cited in the EU report.
The figures underscore the contrast between progress in building and reforming institutions and continuing weaknesses in how democratic safeguards function in practice.
Montenegro: EU frontrunner still faces unfinished reforms
Montenegro remains the Western Balkan country furthest advanced in EU accession negotiations, but its human rights and democracy agenda is not complete.
Judicial independence, accountability, freedom of expression, media conditions, discrimination and the effectiveness of institutions remain important reform areas.
Montenegro’s experience illustrates a wider regional problem: formal progress towards EU membership does not automatically eliminate institutional weaknesses accumulated over decades.
Bosnia: Constitutional structure remains a human rights problem
Bosnia and Herzegovina faces perhaps the region’s most distinctive structural challenge.
Its constitutional and electoral arrangements continue to differentiate between citizens according to ethnicity and place of residence, an issue that has repeatedly generated European human rights litigation.
Political deadlock and ethnonational divisions continue to complicate institutional reform.
Media freedom, attacks and pressure against journalists, discrimination, corruption and the functioning of democratic institutions remain concerns alongside the country’s unresolved constitutional questions.
The EU report’s indicators place Bosnia and Herzegovina 86th on the World Press Freedom Index, behind Albania and significantly behind North Macedonia.
North Macedonia: Laws exist, implementation lags
North Macedonia offers one of the clearest examples of the region’s implementation gap.
“The country continued to meet its general obligations on fundamental rights, but legislation was not implemented in a systematic manner,” the EU report said.
Conditions in prisons received particularly severe criticism.
“The overall situation, in particular living conditions in prisons remains appalling,” the report said.
The EU also raised concerns about the independence and financing of human-rights institutions, discrimination, the protection of people with disabilities and the absence of progress in some areas of personal-data protection.
Media legislation recorded some progress, but the EU said the public broadcaster continued to face significant challenges regarding institutional autonomy.
The framework governing state advertising also “raised concerns about the potential misuse of public funds”.
North Macedonia ranked 42nd for press freedom, 64th for rule of law and 84th for perceived corruption, giving it one of the Western Balkans’ better press-freedom rankings despite the structural problems identified by Brussels.
Croatia and Slovenia: EU membership does not end rights challenges
The divide between EU members and candidate countries is significant, but membership itself has not eliminated human rights concerns.
In Croatia and Slovenia, democratic institutions are considerably more consolidated than in much of the Western Balkans, but issues involving discrimination, minority protections, migration and asylum, hate speech and other fundamental-rights questions continue to require attention.
The difference is increasingly one of institutional capacity: EU members operate within stronger enforcement and judicial mechanisms, while several candidate countries still struggle with the independence and effectiveness of the institutions responsible for applying their laws.
Bulgaria and Romania: Rule of law remains central
Bulgaria and Romania have undergone decades of EU-supported judicial and institutional reforms, but corruption, judicial effectiveness, discrimination and protection of vulnerable groups continue to form part of the broader human-rights discussion.
Their experience carries particular relevance for Western Balkan candidates: accession itself does not end scrutiny over democratic standards.
Rather, membership shifts that scrutiny into the EU’s internal rule-of-law and fundamental-rights mechanisms.
Greece: Migration and rights under scrutiny
In Greece, migration and asylum policy remain particularly sensitive human-rights issues.
Treatment of migrants and asylum seekers, border practices, media freedom, discrimination and the effectiveness of safeguards against rights violations have attracted scrutiny from European and international institutions.
Greece’s position on the EU’s external border means that its human-rights obligations are increasingly intertwined with the wider European debate over migration management.
Türkiye remains the regional outlier
Türkiye’s size, political system and long-running but effectively stalled EU accession process distinguish it from most other Balkan states.
Freedom of expression, judicial independence, imprisonment and prosecution of government critics, civil society space and democratic checks and balances remain central issues in relations between Ankara and European institutions.
The country’s trajectory therefore contrasts with Western Balkan states whose governments continue to present EU membership as their principal strategic objective.
Different countries, recurring problems
Taken together, the EU assessments reveal several recurring fault lines across the Balkans.
Rule of law and institutional independence remain fundamental weaknesses, particularly in candidate countries. Laws are frequently closer to European standards than their implementation.
Media freedom remains vulnerable to political influence, economic pressure, concentrated ownership, state financing and attacks or intimidation against journalists.
Corruption continues to undermine public confidence and institutional credibility across much of the region.
Minority rights and discrimination remain persistent issues, although their forms vary considerably — from ethnic and constitutional divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and inter-community relations in Kosovo and North Macedonia to discrimination affecting Roma, LGBTIQ+ people, migrants and other vulnerable groups elsewhere.
And political polarisation increasingly cuts across national boundaries, weakening parliamentary dialogue and trust in institutions.
The EU accession paradox
The comparison also highlights a paradox at the centre of the EU’s Balkan policy.
The Western Balkan countries have spent years adopting European legislation, establishing independent agencies and rewriting strategies in preparation for membership. Yet the decisive question increasingly is not whether institutions formally exist, but whether they operate independently and whether governments consistently enforce the laws they have adopted.
North Macedonia’s assessment encapsulates that problem particularly clearly: Brussels says the country generally meets its fundamental-rights obligations while simultaneously concluding that legislation is not systematically implemented.
Similar gaps between formal rules and political reality can be found elsewhere in the region.
For Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, democracy and fundamental rights are not peripheral requirements of EU accession. They sit within the fundamentals of the enlargement process and therefore directly affect the speed at which countries can advance towards membership.
The EU’s 2025 human rights assessment ultimately presents the Balkans not as a single democratic space but as a region moving at markedly different speeds.
The common challenge, however, is strikingly similar: transforming laws written to European standards into institutions capable of enforcing them regardless of who holds political power.