TIRANA, June 19 /ATA/ – North Macedonia and Albania deserve to start membership talks, the prestigious daily “Financial Times” writes in an editorial.
A year has passed since Greece and what is now called North Macedonia signed a historic deal ending a 27-year dispute between them, in a rare diplomatic success in the Balkans. Now the EU is, yet again, kicking the can down the road on starting accession talks with North Macedonia, and with Albania. After a postponement a year ago. it has put the decision off from a summit this week until October. The delay is hugely regrettable. Setting these countries on the path to membership is vital not just to maintain reform momentum but to send a message to the wider region — the most volatile in Europe — that the EU’s doors remain open.
Though the European Commission delivered a new recommendation last month to start talks with both countries, “enlargement fatigue” and anti-migrant sentiment is making west European capitals wary. Germany’s parliament has pushed back any decision until September; the Dutch lower house has rejected opening talks with Albania. French president Emmanuel Macron prefers to concentrate on internal EU reform and strengthening the eurozone — but fears, too, that agreeing to new membership talks could be used against him by domestic critics of the radical left and right.
Yet the Greece-North Macedonia agreement, in particular, deserves to be rewarded. Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s government showed great courage and invested much political capital in achieving it. While the deal is on solid international legal ground, it still has critics in both North Macedonia and Greece, which is holding early elections next month. A strong show of EU support, by opening entry talks with Skopje, would help solidify the deal.
Albania has also made significant reform progress, even if its organised crime networks remain a European problem and Prime Minister Edi Rama — facing accusations of election-rigging, which he denies — has fallen short of the high hopes once placed in him. That might be a justification for opening negotiations with North Macedonia first. But the gap should not be too long, otherwise tension will rise in Albania and among ethnic Albanians in North Macedonia and Kosovo.
To be sure, the quality of democracy and rule of law remains well short of EU standards in both countries. Yet beginning talks on membership — which will still take years to conclude — is the best way to ensure reforms continue. The window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely. Keeping the EU’s door shut will sap efforts to bring countries up to EU standards on governance and on economic regulations.
The economic case is strong, too. Trade between the EU and the six countries of the western Balkans reached €54bn last year; EU companies are the region’s largest investors. Greater access to EU markets should help raise real living standards and enhance stability.
The EU faces rivalry, meanwhile, from countries such as China, Russia, and Turkey, seeking to expand their influence in the region with potentially pernicious effects. Chinese investment, in particular, can seem attractive, given the absence of the usual EU bureaucratic strings — though it often comes with other conditions attached.
Time and again, European leaders have made the mistake of competing against each other in the Balkans, or of treating the region either as a backwater irrelevant to their core concerns or as a swamp from which richer, more stable western Europe must quarantine itself. For 200 years events have shown none of these approaches works — indeed, they often end in far more trouble. It would be a tragedy for the EU to repeat the mistakes of the past.
/ush/ /s.m/ a.jor.
