European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will embark on a five-day tour of the Western Balkans on Sunday, seeking to reaffirm the European Union’s commitment to the region’s long-stalled integration process and to promote the EU’s €6 billion Growth Plan for 2024–2027.
The visit — spanning Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, and North Macedonia — comes as Brussels faces mounting pressure to re-energize enlargement amid growing geopolitical competition and internal EU fatigue over new accessions.
Von der Leyen will begin her trip in Tirana on Monday, where she is scheduled to meet Albanian President Bajram Begaj and Prime Minister Edi Rama before addressing a Regional Investment Conference focused on the EU’s economic support plan for the region. She will then continue to Montenegro for meetings with President Jakov Milatović and Prime Minister Milojko Spajić, as well as to deliver the opening remarks at the Montenegro Investment Conference.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, von der Leyen will visit the Srebrenica memorial and hold talks in Sarajevo with members of the country’s tripartite presidency and the Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers, Borjana Krišto — a symbolic stop meant to underscore the EU’s support for Bosnia’s fragile state institutions.
The Commission chief will then travel to Serbia on Wednesday for meetings with Prime Minister Đuro Macut and President Aleksandar Vučić, before heading to Pristina to confer with Kosovo’s President Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu and caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti. Her final stop will be in Skopje, where she will hold talks with North Macedonia’s President Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, and Parliament Speaker Afrim Gashi.
Von der Leyen’s visit, which will feature several press conferences and speeches broadcast on EBS, marks her fourth consecutive annual tour of the Western Balkans. She has repeatedly described the region as “a part of the European family,” but progress on enlargement has been slow, with political disputes, governance issues, and enlargement fatigue inside the EU stalling negotiations.
The tour also comes at a moment of renewed geopolitical sensitivity. Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine has heightened the EU’s awareness of instability risks in the Balkans, while China and Turkey have sought to expand their economic and political influence. Brussels hopes the Growth Plan — aimed at aligning the region more closely with the EU single market — can anchor the Western Balkans more firmly to the European project even before full membership.
As von der Leyen travels across the region, she is expected to reiterate that EU accession remains a realistic goal — provided governments in the Western Balkans maintain reforms and uphold democratic standards. Yet with skepticism growing both in candidate countries and within the bloc, her message may prove easier to deliver than to realize.