The Commission’s important but flawed growth plan for the Western Balkans

By: Florian Bieber, Nikola Dimitrov and Michael Emerson

In its November 2023 Enlargement Package, the European Commission published an important new growth plan initiative aimed at improving the Western Balkans’ readiness for EU membership. A financial offer of up to 6 billion euros for the years 2024 to 2027 is proposed, subject to compliance with the conditions to be specified in the reform programs.

Positive aspects

The idea that the benefits of membership should be developed gradually alongside increasing readiness for membership, rather than waiting for everything until the day of accession, is entirely justified. The burden of complying with all EU laws and policies is extremely heavy and the time required to achieve this takes many years. Furthermore, full membership of the EU has become increasingly difficult to achieve, conditioned by parallel and politically difficult internal reforms with uncertain outcomes. This strains the political capacity needed to support the process.

The growth plan thus aims to gradually offer useful financial advantages, in step with the series of negotiated measures increasing compliance with EU standards and regulations. Its objective is to restore tangible incentives to progress with reforms. It also represents some movement on the part of the Commission in the sense of independent proposals aimed at reforming the methodology of enlargement, in particular in the framework of accession in stages. Furthermore, it modestly contributes to closing the gap between the funds made available to Member States, such as Croatia, and those of candidate countries. While its goal of contributing to greater economic convergence may be too ambitious, it can at least help prevent the gap from widening between the six Western Balkan countries and its EU neighbors.

Weaknesses

The initiative received mixed reactions in the region. While the region’s leaders welcomed the initiative at an informal meeting in late January in Skopje, many observers dismissed the initiative as either old money in new packaging or an offer of easy money. with only flexible membership conditions. The growth plan does indeed provide substantial additional funds for the region. However, as the recent opinion of the Court of Auditors notesthere is a risk that the conditions of the plan are not ambitious enough and cannot be properly measured.

In addition to the weakness identified by the Court of Auditors, the proposal as it stands presents another major drawback. The Growth Plan has no link to the progress required under the formal accession process, based on the opening and closing of 35 chapters grouped into clusters. As presented so far, it appears to be a distinct path with a life of its own, alongside that of the formal enlargement methodology.

The Commission can certainly say that the successes in the implementation of the reform programs of the growth plan can be perfectly adapted to the measures necessary to close different chapters. But the processes are still only parallel. Compliance with the conditions of the growth plan, even when the Commission has formally agreed to trigger financial payments, has, according to the current Commission proposal, no direct impact on the accession negotiations regarding chapters and clusters with Member States in intergovernmental conferences.

Correct defects

These serious defects should and could be easily corrected. For example, the detailed conditions set out in the required reform programs could be summarized as commitments to improve the ratings of certain chapters, as shown in the reports on the enlargement package. Specifically, these voluminous reports currently summarize the progress of each chapter on a five-level membership readiness rating scale: 1 early, 2 moderate, 3 moderate, 4 good, 5 advanced. Thus, a given reform package would summarily aim to raise the scores of chapters X, Y and Z from “moderate” to “good”, etc.; underpinning this, there would be for each selected chapter a list of planned actions, following the recommendations of the Commission’s reports.

This would create objective bases on which the achievements of the growth plan would impact the formal enlargement process. Even if EU member states would retain their decision-making power over chapters and groups, successes in implementing the Growth Plan would create at least a well-structured presumption in favor of consistent Council decisions today. chronically overloaded with political considerations.

Without this link, the proposal would appear to be a substitute for the accession process rather than a stimulus, thereby reducing incentives to focus on EU membership and disempowering political actors pushing for membership. membership.

This should be accompanied by another long-awaited reform, aimed at moving decision-making in the Council on chapters and groups to the basis of qualified majority, rather than the currently crippling unanimity.

Discretionary use of the individual veto on issues unrelated to the Copenhagen criteria, as in the notorious case of Bulgaria’s treatment of North Macedonia, undermines the merit-based nature of the accession process, destroying its conditionality and credibility. This distracts from the heart of the process – reforms – both in the candidate countries and in the EU. The move to qualified majority in intermediate stages is legally a simple matter to be decided by the Council, without requiring legislation, treaty amendment or ratification.