Veteran European journalist Michael Martens has cast doubt on the likelihood of Western Balkan countries joining the European Union by 2030, calling such expectations “naive” and detached from the political and structural realities of the bloc.
Speaking in an episode of the PIKË podcast hosted by publicist Veton Surroi, Martens, a correspondent for Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, argued that a more realistic discourse was necessary to avoid misleading public opinion in the region.
“The more clearly we say now that this will not happen, the sooner we can start thinking about alternatives,” Martens said.
He cited the war in Ukraine as a wake-up call to take political rhetoric seriously, pointing to past underestimations of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions—paralleling how Adolf Hitler’s early warnings in Mein Kampf were once dismissed.
Martens also referred to repeated statements by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has openly questioned the EU’s functionality even with its current 27-member configuration.
“Macron has been saying for years that the EU with 27 countries is already barely functioning. How will it function with 33 or more?” Martens asked, expressing doubts about the viability of further enlargement.
If all candidate countries – including the six Western Balkan states, Ukraine, Moldova, and Turkey – were to join, the EU would become a “chaotic and ungovernable structure,” Martens warned.
“It would be a club you wouldn’t want to belong to,” he said.