TIRANA, November 4/ATA/- North Macedonia and Albania face a risk of surging nationalism and unravelling economic reforms after the EU closed the door for years on their hopes of joining the bloc, the leaders of both countries have warned, the daily newspaper “The Financial Times” writes.
Zoran Zaev, prime minister of North Macedonia, said in an interview that he feared a return to his ethnically divided country’s “bad past”, including a narrowly averted civil war in 2001. Edi Rama, prime minister of Albania, said in a separate interview that his country risked becoming “collateral damage” from the EU’s divisions over enlargement.
The warnings from both Balkan leaders underline analysts’ fears that the EU’s failure to proceed with both countries’ accession process will destabilise a geopolitically delicate region where the influence of other countries including Russia and China is growing.
French president Emmanuel Macron in effect blocked opening accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania. Both countries have complained that the EU is not meeting its side of an implied bargain, after both Tirana and Skopje acted to try to meet Brussels’ demands. The Netherlands and Denmark were also opposed to talks with Albania.
Mr Zaev said he was worried that a sensitive agreement he negotiated with Greece last year to rename his country could be reopened amid a resurgence of nationalist sentiment. The name change was an important step on the road to joining the EU but was contentious in both countries and Mr Zaev warned that further implementation of the deal struck with Athens was now at risk.
“Part of the process is irreversible, but I worry there could be a return to the bad past that we had,” he said, noting the multi-ethnic nature of his country, shared between majority Macedonians and ethnic Albanians.
“If there is enough nationalist rhetoric, radical acting and speeches in North Macedonia, that will give arguments to Greek politicians to use the same kind of rhetoric . . . And that can lead everyone to take concrete steps which will not be good for my region or my country,” Mr Zaev said.
Mr Zaev has already said he will resign and trigger an early election next year in the wake of the EU’s rebuff. He has said the name deal with Greece, known as the Prespa agreement,could be in jeopardy if his party does not win.
In Tirana, Mr Rama said that the decision not to open accession negotiations left a “heavy psychological shock in the country” and harmed the bloc’s credibility in the region.
“We were cut twice from Europe brutally, once for five centuries under the Ottoman Empire and then for half a century under the most brutal communist regime. No one can live with the idea that there can be a third time, and that this time it can be Europe who cuts us brutally from itself,” he said.
Mr Rama and Mr Zaev said they understood the concerns of the EU member states that blocked the negotiations because they want to see reform in the bloc and of its enlargement policies.
But they both agreed that any eventual membership was at least a decade off, and that their countries and the EU itself could meanwhile continue their reforms.
Mr Rama said the need for internal EU reform was “not really a standing alibi for what is the core issue”.
“Europe is in a period where it will get worse before it will get better and we are just the collateral damage of that,” said Mr Rama.
Judy Dempsey, a non-resident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe based in Berlin, said that the EU’s credibility had been damaged because leaders had been told since 2003 that if they met the EU’s criteria, they would be admitted, and now that at least Skopje had done so, it was being rejected on the grounds that the EU must be reformed first.
“Promises have been broken,” she said. “The Western Balkans is now easy picking for the Chinese and Russian influence.”
Mr Zaev said he worried about attempts to fill the vacuum. “This [decision] gives space for third forces, which are not very helpful, who do not offer us democracy, freedoms, and rule of law,” he said. /a.i/
