Following the last European Council on October 17-18, French President Emmanuel Macron was heavily criticized for blocking the opening of negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania for possible EU membership . European Council President Donald Tusk, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn – who even apologized directly to Skopje and Tirana for the delay – expressed their disbelief and their anger at the French veto, in particular against North Macedonia. Despite the efforts of the Finnish presidency to promote the decoupling of the two cases and reach a compromise, Macron’s decision prevented either candidate country from reaching the next stage of the enlargement process.
Many commentators having posed the potential negative consequences of the French decision for the Balkans and the European Union. Assuming that the decision is barely related to North Macedonia and Albania – and is instead a reflection of French domestic politics – it is nonetheless important to assess whether, from a strict French perspective, whether or not it was an error.
It was widely expected, at least since the last European Council in April, that Albania would not be lucky enough to obtain an invitation to negotiations due to French, Dutch and Danish opposition. Therefore, the focus here – whether this position is fair to Tirana or not – will be on North Macedonia, since France stood alone against the twenty-six other EU member states to oppose the negotiations with Skopje.
Why is France afraid of enlargement?
Macron made this decision both for short-term opportunistic reasons and for important long-term considerations.
In the short term, Macron argued that the current EU enlargement process was not working, that Albania and North Macedonia’s efforts to meet EU membership criteria were not not sufficient, that any leverage the EU had to promote reforms would be lost if negotiations began. and that the decoupling of the two countries could pose security concerns due to the high number of ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia. The last point can be dismissed as unfounded. As for concerns about the EU enlargement process, France has never raised these concerns before and has never proposed solutions to resolve the process, unlike the European Commission and others who have. did. here
And here. When it comes to reform efforts in Skopje and Tirana, it can still be argued that the candidates are not doing enough. The question is whether removing them or letting them participate in the process will give more impetus to reforms. Greece has blocked North Macedonia from EU enlargement for a decade, with disastrous consequences for Skopje, which has not led to significant momentum for reforms, as the Macron’s argument.
Behind this first series of reasons lie the real concerns, on which Macron was rather virulent and constant since his election. First, he argues that twenty-seven members (after Brexit) already represent too many votes to have an effective political union capable of making decisions. Yet he also argued that the EU’s decision-making processes and institutions are dysfunctional, regardless of the number of members. Which one is it? Is the number of voices at the table the cause of the dysfunction or the design of the institutions themselves? Would Paris also prevent Scotland or Iceland from joining because twenty-seven is already too many? If it comes to institutional reform, the Lisbon Treaty already includes certain reforms which have not been implemented. Moreover, research tends to show that the “widening versus deepening” question, which France has been relaunching since 2017, is more complex than it seems. In other words, reforms are coming because it is the Union which is enlarging, and not the other way around.
Second, historically, France has always been reluctant to enlarge, from the United Kingdom in the 1960s to Spain in the 1980s. Why? Because this weakens the influence of Paris and dilutes the political project of the EU compared to what France would like it to be: more integrated and more representative of France itself. Furthermore, the 2004 Eastern enlargement remains a huge political trauma, as many argue that it caused the failure of the 2005 European Constitution referendum and fueled widespread reluctance towards enlargement. within French public opinion. The 2004 enlargement moved the epicenter of Europe – in the eyes of Paris – towards the East, towards Germany. Paris therefore considers Berlin as the main winner of the last fifteen years, Germany having fully benefited from the integration of its former communist neighbors. Likewise, France considers the Balkans to be part of Germany’s sphere of influence, which means that enlargement must be seen from this point of view as an element of a broader agreement between France and Germany. Indeed, Berlin has blocked most of Macron’s reform ideas on issues such as the eurozone, and Macron is now leading a process that matters more to Germany, for economic and security reasons, than to France.
The idea that Paris is motivated to block further enlargement negotiations for fear of fueling the populist far right in France should be dismissed as irrelevant, not only because enlargement is a very secondary issue which would not occupy the minds of voters during general elections, but also because by opening or regularly maintaining debates on immigration and Islam in France itself, the French government does not need to Albania to animate the populist far right at home.
Take two steps back
Beyond the negative consequences for the EU and the region, Macron’s decision is also harmful for France itself, because it is not only based on Macron’s liberal ambition for Europe described in his speech at the Sorbonne 2017but also on France’s own interests in the Balkans.
While Paris withdrew from the Balkans years ago and the region does not appear crucial to its diplomacy, it has four key objectives in the region:
- Rethink the enlargement procedure by prioritizing the establishment of the rule of law and promoting governments sincerely committed to the EU and its values
- Fighting illiberalism in the Balkans as everywhere else in Europe
- Have enough credibility to re-emerge as a serious player in the region as part of its “strategy for the Balkans»
- Actively promote and assist in resolving the Serbia-Kosovo issue
By strongly supporting the government of North Macedonia from the start and granting it the opening of negotiations, it would have been possible to create a virtuous circle in the region and kill four birds with one stone. This would have reaffirmed France’s desire for the enlargement process to be a question of values and attitudes, rather than simply ticking boxes. This would have sent a strong signal to the region’s illiberal regimes and their people about the true path forward towards European membership. This would have placed France at the center of the game in a positive way and would have given it the political credit to demand and do more. This would have shown Serbia that a government willing to make serious sacrifices, as Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s government did, was not without reward, thus placing France at the center of the European effort to resolve the Serbia-Kosovo question. Moreover, all this could have been attempted without political cost, in a win-win situation for France, the EU and the Balkans.
President Macron has chosen to do exactly the opposite. He has spent considerable political capital (twenty-six MPs in favor against Paris alone) on a subject and a country which, again, is not considered a top priority. Hence a lose-lose situation for France, the EU and the Balkans. The decision will see no progress in the reform of the accession process, the strengthening of illiberal regimes, the absolute loss of political credit in the region and the loss of the only incentive that could be used against Serbia (even if the last polls show that the Serbs are not ready to trade Kosovo for EU integration). Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić immediately reacted to the French decision by asserting that the EU’s comments made no sense. Since it was not in Vučić’s interest to resolve the Kosovo issue in the short term (as argued here), how does France hope to convince him otherwise, now that it has demonstrated that such an approach would not allow progress towards the EU?
In total, taking into account France’s four objectives in the Balkans, it seems that Macron’s decision has destroyed the possibility of achieving them, at the cost of a high political cost, both with its European partners and in the Balkans.
Ironically, on October 24, the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament, which includes Macron’s party, joined its voice with other groups voting for a resolution support the opening of negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia, further reinforcing Paris’ isolation on the subject.
Stop the double talk
It is high time for France to take sides between non-enlargement and enlargement in exchange for concrete reforms in Brussels and in the candidate countries. In the latter case, Paris must adopt a constructive rather than destructive role. If this is the case, Macron should have the decency to say so instead of humiliating countries and people by postponing decisions every six months. The people of the region are not stupid, they know that their countries are not welcome and are leaving in droves, not as asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, but as legal workers in Germany, Austria and other EU countries.
If the EU is ever to become a serious political and military player, as Macron wishes, the Balkans are the most obvious region – perhaps the only one – in which such power can materialize. But the Balkans are also the place where the EU has failed the most over the past thirty years. Balkan countries still rely more on the United States (North Macedonia and Montenegro recently became NATO members), despite all the quirks of the Trump administration, than on the EU, let alone other powers such as China, Russia or Turkey. France cannot say that it wants to anchor the Balkans closer to the EU, and “at the same time,» kill his chances of doing so.
Loic Tregoures, PhD, teaches political science at the Catholic University of Lille. He specializes in the Balkans.
Further reading
Image: French President Emmanuel Macron attends the second day of the Brexit-dominated European Union leaders’ summit, in Brussels, Belgium October 18, 2019. REUTERS/Toby Melville