The EU faced a near-boycott the last time it tried to bring Western Balkan countries together in Brussels, when three leaders, led by Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, threatened not to come. This time, it is Brussels which sets the tone, anxious not to lose the region under Russian and Chinese influence.
The 27 EU leaders will travel to the Albanian capital on Tuesday for a one-day meeting to make their case, marking the first time an EU-Western Balkans summit has been held in the region. This change of venue, said a senior EU official centrally involved in the planning, “represents a new dynamism in our relationship.”
The six non-EU participants – Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – are at different stages in their bid to join the bloc. And they are united on one point: frustration with the slowness of their journey.
The enlargement process has effectively stalled since the accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, with many Western members lamenting that new entrants like Hungary and Poland are simply flouting EU standards on enlargement. ‘Rule of law and democracy.
But Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine has breathed new life into EU expansion, refocusing Europe’s attention back home. One observation: Reluctance to expand eastward has growing geopolitical consequences, creating a vacuum that Russia and China are already working to fill.
“Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, EU enlargement is back,” said Ivan Vejvoda, a Balkans specialist at the Vienna Institute of Human Sciences. “This brought the EU out of its complacency, even though Russian and even Chinese interference in the region was present in various ways before the invasion. »
Russia and China are active
Russia has long exercised influence in a region where it has strong historical ties.
Serbia, by far the largest country in the Western Balkans, has perhaps the closest ties to Moscow. The two countries held joint military exercises near the Serbian capital Belgrade last year, and Russia supplied the country with MiG-29 fighter jets.
President Vučić has also resisted pressure to align with EU sanctions against Moscow and continues to import all Serbian gas from Russia. At the same time, Serbia’s main oil company, NIS, is majority-owned by Russian energy giant Gazprom.
But Serbia also managed to cross a fine line by censoring Russia when necessary. For example, he supported a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s use of fraudulent referendums in eastern Ukraine as a pretext for attempted annexation.
China’s activity in the region is also a growing concern for the EU amid a reassessment of the bloc’s relationship with the world’s second-largest economy. In recent years, Beijing has made inroads in the Western Balkans through its massive Belt and Road investment program, offering an attractive alternative to countries tired of waiting in the EU’s wings.
Evidence of China’s riches is scattered across the Western Balkans.
Montenegro is struggling to repay a Chinese loan it took out in 2014 to help finance a controversial highway project that remains unfinished – a telling symbol of the compromises involved in Chinese investments.
In Serbia, China Rail International (CRI) and China Communications Construction Company began work on the billion-euro Belgrade-Budapest railway last year, while China’s Hesteel Group acquired iron producer Serbian Zelezara Smederevo in 2016.
In total, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) estimates that China has been involved in 136 major regional projects, worth more than 32 billion euros between 2009 and 2021.
“China is playing the long game,” said Goran Buldioski, who tracks Beijing’s influence in the region as director of Open Society Programs – Europe and Central Asia.
“They not only bring money and investment, but also many challenges when it comes to negotiations with the EU,” he added, stressing that China’s money comes without the EU anti-corruption and environmental standards.
The EU reacts
Fear of ceding influence to bad actors like China and Russia is helping to sharpen tempers as European leaders gather in Tirana.
Among the items on Tuesday’s agenda are combating the manipulation of foreign information and improving cybersecurity, amid growing awareness that the EU is losing the battles of communication when it comes to selling its history to the Western Balkan countries.
Kremlin-aligned media outlets, such as Russia’s Sputnik, have helped fuel pro-Russian discourse in the region. The EU’s attempt to argue that it is by far the region’s largest investor and trading partner is being stifled. responsible for around 70 percent of Western Balkan trade.
A survey This summer, 51 percent of Serbs would vote against EU membership in a referendum, while 40 percent of respondents gave Russian leader Vladimir Putin high marks.
However, recent months have seen progress in relations between the EU and the Western Balkans. EU countries agreed last week to allow Kosovo citizens visa-free travel throughout the EU from 2024. And last summer, EU leaders decided to launch negotiations of accession with Albania and North Macedonia, three years after French President Emmanuel Macron. blocked such a gesture.
Tuesday’s summit is also expected to produce more results.
An agreement on roaming charge relief will be signed, following an announcement made last year.
The EU is also expected to report further progress in education programs aimed at combating what is seen as a “brain drain” from the region (for example, Albania has experienced a wave young men leaving the country for Britain this year).
Leaders will also discuss the EU’s new common gas purchasing platform, aimed at bringing down exorbitant prices. The mechanism was opened to members of the Western Balkans to divert them from Russian fossil fuels.
But Brussels will also want something in return.
Alignment with European foreign and security policy is among the main objectives of Tuesday’s meeting, officials said.
The EU is also demanding more commitments from Serbia to align its visa policy with that of the EU, following an increase in the number of migrants entering the EU this year via the Western Balkans. Serbia currently allows visa-free travel from countries like India, Tunisia and Burundi, but it also benefits from a visa-free travel agreement with the EU, making it easier for these migrants to cross to the EU.
As one European official said before the summit, “solidarity works both ways.”
