On November 3rd, 2022, the Western Balkan Six — comprised of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia — met with EU representatives at the eighth annual Western Balkans Summit to discuss paths towards further alignment with the European Union. These summits, which have been occurring since 2014, are held under the banner of the Berlin Process, a diplomatic project that aims to integrate the Balkans into the EU.
Despite originally being meant to end in 2018, the initiative is still ongoing. Moreover, in only eight years, the number of EU countries participating in the summits has risen from five to ten. These countries, backed by the European Commission, have provided funding and diplomatic support for programs created during the summits, facilitating years of multilateral commitments within the WB6. This has created the means to develop a “consistent format” in regional cooperation and policy. The point of the Berlin Process is to ensure a stable WB6 that can safely and seamlessly integrate with the EU — but to what extent?
The Berlin Process has supported reconciliation and infrastructure projects in the Western Balkans under the guise of preparing it for European ascension. Still, there is no sign that the EU is ready to accept Balkan membership. This became especially clear in 2021 when the EU revealed that previously guaranteed membership for countries of the WB6 had been rescinded. In 2022, Balkan leaders complained about their continuously deferred status as Ukraine and Moldova became EU candidates.
The Western Balkans have been called “Europe’s soft underbelly” by Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who joined the Berlin Process in 2019. What about them is so vulnerable that the EU funnels billions of euros into the private sectors of the WB6 and hosts eight years of summits?
Before the Balkan Process was publicly introduced, tensions between Russia and the EU were rising, especially on the topic of Ukraine. In 2013, a year before the first WB6 summit, Ukraine rejected an EU trade pact and opened economic discussions with Russia. In February 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine. The direct EU reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea was trade sanctions. Indirectly, it is possible that the Berlin Process was created as a preventative measure to ensure that the Balkans would not align with Russia as Ukraine had.
In June 2014, only four months after Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Angela Merkel announced that Germany would host a conference to discuss EU enlargement with the “forgotten” Western Balkans. In August, the first WB6-EU summit was held in Berlin. This Europeanization effort appears to come from an anti-Russian agenda. One of the goals of the Berlin Process could be bringing the Balkans closer to the EU, which is vulnerable to Russian influence due to their political distance from the European Union and their geographic closeness to Russia.
The Balkans have strained relations with each other due to differing levels of development, ethnic tensions, and the legacy of occupation by invading countries. However, these development efforts have forced cooperation between these states. Over eight years, the Berlin Process helped establish interlinking ties between the six Western Balkan countries through various “boundary objects”: concerns that potentially incompatible interest groups have in common. It has encouraged cooperation via climate action, education, and building infrastructure. Other boundary objects include addressing youth unemployment, corruption, and economic problems that the regions share.
This cooperation has helped develop the Western Balkans and strengthened the ties between the WB6. It has aligned those countries with EU membership requirements, thus, deepening the relationships between the EU and the Balkans. Yet, it has also created enormous obligations from the Balkans to the EU. The EU considers the billions it has spent on the WB6 as an investment — “grants and donations directed towards the region are not given for free.”
The Berlin Process has also tangibly deepened EU-WB6 relations. Over the COVID-19 pandemic, the Western Balkans summit created a platform to improve crossing points between the WB6 and the EU — the first ‘green lane’ between an EU member country and a Western Balkan country was signed into existence. The green lane between North Macedonia and Greece uses an improved version of the electronic exchange of data that has been in place since 2010 to expedite border crossings. This sets a precedent for freer trade links between the EU and the WB6 and allows Balkan citizens quicker movement out of and into the Western Balkans. This achievement signals increased trust and cooperation between the EU and WB6, and it indicates that further integration via trade is on the horizon.
Ultimately, no matter the potential ulterior motives, the summits provide an arena to promote integration into the European Union, and between the Balkan countries, by targeting outstanding issues in the WB6. To an extent, the reconciliation effort is working. In an unprecedented decision during the 2022 summit, the Western Balkans accepted policies allowing free movement for citizens throughout the region and the interregional recognition of university and professional credentials. This commitment is significant in that it actively acknowledges the sovereignty of each country; particularly, it accepts the sovereign status of Kosovo, which has previously been unacknowledged as a country.
Integrating the Western Balkan region into the EU was described as a “strategic necessity” by Christiane Fullman, the Head of the Division for Western Balkans at the Federal Foreign Office of Germany. The diplomatic consensus is that the EU is incomplete without the WB6 and that Europe is vulnerable without its membership. Yet, there is a significant gap between the established goals of the Berlin Process and the current reality, as the Balkans are relegated to the sidelines. So, why not stop hosting summits? The eight years of Balkan development indicate that the European Union is satisfied with the current status quo or that more urgent events overshadow the Balkan issue. Since there have not been significant changes in the EU membership status of the WB6 countries, it shows that the EU is achieving whatever goal it has for the Balkans through summits alone. However, the Balkans are not satisfied.
The extended timeline of the Berlin Process, years of shifted goalposts, and a lack of action are causing disillusionment in the WB6. The EU’s credibility is waning — Balkan leadership is skeptical of ever joining the European Union. The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, expressed this sentiment in June of 2022: “[w]e cannot cry out because even if anyone will hear them or will hear us it will change nothing. We need to work. We need to carry on changing ourselves.”
Edited by Sabrina Nelson
Ewa Bożerocka is an undergraduate student at McGill University, pursuing a B.A. Honours in Political Science, with a major in International Development. She is a staff writer for Catalyst.