Skopje and Tirana officially started the process of negotiations for membership in the European Union (EU). After many expectations and tactics, July 19 seems to have restored hopes for a European perspective in the two countries of the Western Balkans. With this, the vacuum created after the lack of capacity of the EU leaders to bring the expansion to completion with the six countries of the region, which have been waiting at the doors of the Union for a long time, begins to be fulfilled.
North Macedonia first signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement in 2001 and gained candidate country status in 2005, when Serbia and Montenegro were still a federation. In 2009, it received the first recommendation of the European Commission (EC) for the start of negotiations, which was repeated every year until now, but the negotiations were impossible due to the veto by Greece for the name (2008-2018), by France for the new Methodology (2019-2020) and from Bulgaria (2020-2022).
Albania, meanwhile, gained candidate status nine years after North Macedonia – in 2014, while it received the first recommendation from the EC to open negotiations in 2018. Since then, Albania has also been waiting for the start of negotiations initially due to the French blockade, and then the Bulgarian one, because it was paired with North Macedonia.
Montenegro initially moved faster towards EU integration: in 2006 it declared independence, in 2010 it received the status of a candidate country, in 2011 the EC recommended the start of negotiations and in 2012 the first Brussels-Podgorica intergovernmental meeting was held. Meanwhile, in 2012, Serbia received the status of a candidate country, and in 2014, negotiations for membership with the EU began. Although negotiations began nearly a decade ago, the two countries have made little progress in the process. Out of 33 chapters, Montenegro has closed only 3, while Serbia has closed only 3 out of 35 chapters. The 35th chapter for Serbia concerns the normalization of relations with Kosovo, which means before it reaches full membership, there must be an agreement with Pristina.
Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are in the group that is furthest in the integration process. In 2016, Kosovo reached the Stabilization-Association Agreement with the EU, and in 2012, talks on visa liberalization began. The only progress has been the decision of the EC in 2018 that Kosovo has met the criteria for visa liberalization, but this decision is still awaiting approval by the European Parliament (EP). Unlike Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina applied for candidate status in 2016, and the EU Council set as a precondition a list of 14 priorities, which mean reforms for the functioning of the state before receiving candidate status for membership.
All these setbacks in the integration of a region of 18 million people (as half of Romania) have created a geopolitical vacuum, which is attempted to be filled by Russia, China and other actors from the East. The war in Ukraine has brought the danger ever closer to the EU, which has difficulty preventing these malign influences in a turbulent region that is a source of conflicts, such as the Balkans. In the run-up to the war, in February of this year, Ukraine applied for candidate status in the EU, seeking full membership through an accelerated procedure. In June, the EU Council gave it the status of a candidate country, but it is not known when the negotiations will start and how long the entire integration process will last.
With this, the EU and Russia entered into an open competition to define the borders of the areas of interest, which brings the risk of reviving the ghosts of wars in the Balkans, where Russian influence remains strong. This influence activated all the pro-Russian structures in North Macedonia, which tried to prevent the approval of the French Proposal for overcoming the Skopje-Sofia dispute, the same way they tried to block the reaching of the Prespa Agreement with Greece in 2018. Fake news were used as a catalyst for the mobilization of nationalist structures even in the protests organized by the anti-NATO and anti-EU parties. The media and organizations, which are estimated to have sympathy for Russia, initially built the narrative that the Skopje-Sofia agreement is actually an Albanian-Bulgarian agreement for undoing the ethnic identity of Macedonians. A lot of Russian-style fake news and propaganda was used to build this narrative. There was an attempt to bring the problem to the inter-ethnic level and by inciting a conflict between the two largest ethnic groups instead of achieving the goal of blocking the Proposal.
Fortunately this did not happen. However, another delicate moment will be the amendment of the Constitution of North Macedonia in order to include the ethnic Bulgarians in it. The current government has 64 deputies, while it can also count on 10 deputies from the Albanian opposition parties. To change the Constitution, a qualified majority is needed, or two-thirds of the total number of deputies, which in numbers is at least 80 votes out of 120 in total. The government lacks 6 deputies and the amendment of the Constitution is one of the main obligations that have been undertaken with the French Proposal. This change is expected to happen after a year, after negotiations with the EU begin and the screening of laws is carried out, while the opening of chapters or clusters is conditioned precisely by this constitutional change. This moment can bring new tensions, which have the risk of being transferred to the inter-ethnic level as well.
Written by: Xhelal Neziri
