It might be a trauma, but no one can claim Bulgaria’s recent veto on North Macedonia’s EU accession talks came as a shock. It was seen coming from, at least, late August by EU states’ diplomats who meet in the relevant EU Council working group, the committee on enlargement (Coela), in Brussels, Brussels-based online newspaper EUobserver says in an analysis.
“But Germany, the outgoing EU presidency, showed little sense of urgency. Berlin behaved as if its mighty chancellor, Angela Merkel, would get a last-minute deal, the way she did, for instance, on the EU budget and on climate targets,” reads EUobserver.
But, according to author of analysis Ernest Bunguri, when it comes to political and psychological complexity, the Western Balkans are in “a league of their own.” Identity and language are still weaponised in the region, the same way they were in all of Europe after World War 2, when the EU project began.
“To be honest, if Bulgaria/North Macedonia was the only problem, it would probably have been solved by now. But in fact, France, and other EU states, such as Denmark, the Netherlands, and Spain, have, for years, been putting obstacle after obstacle in the way of enlargement. On paper, the EU accession process has its ‘Copenhagen criteria’, which tell those on the outside to fix their problems before they get in. But in reality, it is EU national elections and even EU leaders’ personal ambitions which have become the bloc’s enlargement conditionality,” says newspaper.
According to EUobserver, first, the country waited “nine years before Greece lifted its EU veto in a painful dispute on local history” due to which it changed its name and constitution and all-but “rooted out corruption and nationalism.”
Now, Bulgaria wants them to say their language and ethnicity are fake, in the run-up to Bulgarian elections in March. And if that is solved? Well, we also have Czech, Cypriot, Dutch, and German elections next year, adds newspaper.
“The level of progress in the Western Balkans since the devastating wars of the 1990s has been breathtaking – any Europeans who go hiking there or who go on holiday to the region can see it with their own eyes. It is the EU dream that inspired the Western Balkans to make it this far. And it is billions of euros of EU taxpayers’ money which has been invested there in the name of bringing Europe together. But the journey is not over and, lately, the dream is turning sour,” reads EUobserver.
According to the newspaper, it’s not just EU hypocrisy – preaching rule-of-law, while Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Polish deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński destroy rule-of-law. It’s not just weak PR – in Serbia, which gets the biggest share of EU pre-accession funds, most Serbs somehow think China, Russia, and Turkey do more than the EU for their country.
“It’s about the deeper EU attitude to the Western Balkans as outsiders, leftovers, second-class ticket holders. The pandemic cast a harsh spotlight on this when the EU slammed shut its borders to the region as if it was Wuhan earlier this year. Nobody thought to invite these EU family-members-to-be, or even their Erasmus students, inside Europe’s ring of protection. Instead, the EU gave the Western Balkans €3bn to shut up (and say: ‘Thank you!’), even as existing EU states began to fight with each other about borders, masks, and toilet paper. And the other day, when European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke of vaccines, she said the Western Balkans might get the EU’s leftovers, after member states had had their fill,” reads the analysis.
“I am just a journalist and my job is not to predict what happens next if the EU continues like this. But for me, it makes no sense to treat the Western Balkans this way. How can we be outsiders if we share the same history, culture, and geography – the Western Balkans are literally surrounded by EU countries and maritime zones?,” author says in the analysis.
“With every new veto and every new Hungarian or Polish outrage, the European model shines less brightly. So let’s not wait for the new US administration of president-elect Joe Biden to come in and try to mend the things we have broken or neglected. And let’s not hope for last-minute miracles, the way Germany did on Bulgaria, to stop trains from crashing. Instead, let’s make the EU dream bright again. Europe can be bold. She can hold enemies of EU values to account, rise above national politics, and end veto-blackmail. But EU leaders and citizens must also open their minds to the fact there is no united Europe, so long as there is a Western Balkans-shaped hole in its map,” concludes EUobserver.
