Today marks the 20th anniversary of the European Union-Western Balkans Summit held in Thessaloniki on June 21, 2003. The Thessaloniki Summit is one of the most important events in the context of the European integration of the countries in the region.
On 21 June 2003, the leaders of the European Union and its Member States, as well as the then acceding and candidate countries, as well as the leaders of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, adopted the Declaration which, for the first time, unequivocally confirmed the European perspective for all Western Balkan countries.
A sentence from the Declaration – “The future of the Balkans is within the European Union” – marked the Thessaloniki summit in 2003. The day before, on June 20, the European Council, at the initiative of Greece, had also approved the Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans.
The promise made by the European Union in Thessaloniki in 2003 that the former Yugoslav republics and Albania would have a European perspective is the first expression of the EU’s unequivocal support for future integration and separate membership. of these States to the Union. This happened at a time when all had already entered into the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), a European Union initiative launched in 1999, which established the first legal and political links between the region and the EU.
At the EU summit in Santa Maria da Feira in 2000, it was confirmed that all participants in the process were potential candidates for membership. A few months later, at the EU-Western Balkans summit in Zagreb (the first of its kind), which was finally attended by the President of the FRY, the countries of the region were invited to join the EU. However, at the Thessaloniki Summit, an extremely important step forward was taken, signaling the EU’s desire to secure the European perspective for the region, providing a stronger initial push for the implementation of the necessary reforms.
One of the messages from the June 2003 summit was the introduction of the criterion of progress based on individual merit, meaning that from now until today, the progress of each country in the region towards the EU depends on its own achievements in achieving the set goals. Copenhagen Criteria, symbolically declared on the same day ten years earlier – in 1993.
However, today, twenty years later, the (European) outlook for the Western Balkan countries is not as bright. Progress towards the European Union based on countries’ merits was slowed or stopped, while only Croatia, among the participants at the Thessaloniki summit, became a member of the European Union – in 2013.
Serbia and Montenegro have been negotiating their accession to the EU for 9 years, or more precisely 11 years, without any realistic timetable for the completion of the negotiation process. Negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania only officially began in July 2022, with many obstacles standing in the way of further progress. Bosnia and Herzegovina was only granted candidate status last year, while Kosovo, which set out on its own European path after declaring independence in 2008, recently applied for membership.