After the French veto: the new rush towards the Western Balkans

To say that Emmanuel Macron has been active on the European and international scene since coming to power in 2017 is an understatement. But this year’s post-summer period has been particularly frenetic, even by the French president’s standards. He tried to broker a conversation between Iran and the United States, launched a new Russian initiative – and has now vetoed the accession negotiations of Albania and North Macedonia at the European Council of this month. Macron also refused to decouple the accession processes of Albania and North Macedonia, even though other member states also agreed that Albania was not ready.

His decision made Macron the object of anger from a number of European partners and European Union member states. That said, the result was not a surprise: he had long insisted that further integration was needed before further enlargement. Macron’s integration campaign includes demands for internal EU reform, particularly reform of the Eurozone, where he faces, much to his dismay, resistance from Germany. He also called for reform of the enlargement process itself, whose flaws include a strong tendency towards irreversible progression once underway, Turkey’s main counterexample aside.

It is no secret that French public opinion is wary of the enlargement of an EU already perceived as dysfunctional: there is weariness with the fragility of the EU and pro-European sentiment. A recent ECFR investigation showed that Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and France were the countries most reluctant to see Western Balkan countries join the EU in the coming decade. Macron has made it his mission to demonstrate to French citizens how the EU can be effective, agile and human: this is partly the explanation for his wave of initiatives in recent years.

To explain his decision to the European Council, the president said: “We need a reformed European Union and a reformed enlargement process, real credibility and a strategic vision of who we are and our role “. Macron remains convinced that, without reform, the The EU will be diluted and perhaps paralyzed by the entry of new members.

So, will this be Macron’s great “historical error”, as Jean-Claude Juncker called it?

In the Balkans themselves, the “vegetarian” power of the EU risks being little match for the carnivorous geopolitics of the region – and potentially more than ever, after this European Council. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has already said According to the Financial Times, the EU’s decision has given the region the feeling that it cannot rely solely on its Western neighbors. His words suggest he feels vindicated in his decision to allow Russia to take over Serbia’s energy sector and invite it to conduct regular military exercises with Serbia. Indeed, at this very moment, Russian S-400s are heading towards Serbia, to participate in the Slavic Shield-2019 joint exercise. And it’s not just Russia that offers more attractive prospects to Western Balkan countries: China’s massive infrastructure investments in the region may have come under criticism from Brussels, but on the ground, they seem to fill a void that the EU does not care about.

The end of North Macedonia’s membership prospects means that the EU has failed to recognize the incredible efforts made to reach the Prespa agreement.

The strategy of choosing between East and West – the balancing act perfected by the late Yugoslav leader Tito – remains popular in Belgrade and elsewhere in the Balkans. A popular saying among observers of the region is that what Slobodan Milosevic failed to achieve through force, Vucic will achieve through peace. In the absence of an opposition and/or free media at home, Serbia’s leaders now appear geopolitically unchallenged externally. All this could lead to a regional rearrangement that leaves little room for the EU, with the region divided between spheres of influence led by Serbia and Albania. In the absence of a single entity powerful enough to bring together competing forces, this would simply be a logical outcome. For Albania, this could mean the return of the Greater Albania movement, a vision uniting Albanians in Albania with Kosovo, North Macedonia and beyond.

And from North Macedonia’s point of view, destabilization by the Albanian minority is the last thing it would need. Ending its membership prospects means the EU has failed to recognize the incredible efforts made to secure Prespa agreement. For people living in North Macedonia, joining the deal was partly based on the prospect of progress towards EU membership. This agreement with Greece and the bilateral friendship agreement with Bulgaria should have opened the way for the government to finally turn to much-needed domestic reforms. But the administration of Zoran Zaev, which relied heavily on the promise of EU accession negotiations, has now decided to hold early elections in April 2020. Political battles over symbolism will continue to prevail in the politics of the country, with the opposition party VMRO already present. attack the Prespa agreement again.

The security situation in the Western Balkans could deteriorate rapidly if nationalist forces and third-party actors become more active there. This is a problem that the EU could – and still can – avoid. It must begin to credibly engage with countries in the region to find new ways to move forward, even if enlargement is not in sight. Appointing an envoy for the Western Balkans would be a good start – the United States already has two.

If the EU spends the next few years focusing solely on its future relationship with Britain and only belatedly comes up with a working model for the Balkans, it will already be too late. A year can make all the difference. Being strategic about the scale of the Western Balkans’ problems – and about the scale of the EU’s influence – will be a sign of the EU’s geopolitical maturity. Macron must also recognize this. Otherwise, the EU will find itself in a new credibility crisis or – more serious – in a real security crisis in the region that it recognizes as its immediate neighborhood.

There is a contradiction between the reset on Russia Macron presented in August – what he presented as a necessity in the context of a Sino-Russian rapprochement which would not work in favor of Europe – his attitude towards the Balkans, of which he neglected geopolitical battlefield potential. There is no doubt that TürkiyeRussia and China will continue to pursue their political and economic priorities in the Western Balkans – potentially to the detriment of the region itself and the EU countries’ own interests.