Za "Time" from Bonn
Marta Kos, the European Neighborhood Commissioner, has an idea. It's not a new idea, but it's an idea nonetheless. "I don't want to be remembered as the commissioner who introduced Trojan horses into the Union that will become active in five, ten or fifteen years," she told the Financial Times last week.
Therefore The European Commission, as she added, is working on the idea of a "trial period" for future new members of the European Union. If they fall back in democracy during that period, they can be kicked out of the EU again.
Marta Kos thereby buried a little bit of enthusiasm around the dusty idea of the enlargement of the European Union. That bit of enthusiasm came after "the movement in the waiting room," as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the latest progress reports for countries negotiating membership.
Montenegro is generally described as frontrunner and it is predicted that the negotiations will be successfully concluded by the end of 2026. Albania, Moldova and Ukraine were praised - the latter two although they are negotiating out of turn for geopolitical reasons. But now Marta Kos tells them that she is waiting for them - second-class membership in the EU. They would spend "five, ten or fifteen years" in that donkey's bench, if the Commissioner's statements are to be read literally.
MACRON'S MESSAGES
A lot of paper has been spent describing how countries like Serbia - which have themselves asked to join the EU - are moving away from the goal. Because they have no will for reforms. Even less so, as the European Union itself has given up on the concept of enlargement, which was once key to its existence. It was a great guiding idea, the whole continent united.
Since the promise made in Thessaloniki in 2003, in the wake of the great expansion to the east, only Bulgaria and Romania (2007), and then Croatia (2013), have joined the EU. Since then it has been a dead sea.
The disparity in which Brussels finds itself was explained by the French Minister for the EU at the time, Nathalie Loiseau, whom President Emmanuel Macron sent to Belgrade in 2019 to convey an important message. "The current state of the EU does not allow for new accessions under satisfactory conditions, both for the EU itself and for the new states that would join it," she said in front of the cameras.
President Aleksandar Vučić was not confused: "I have nothing to add here. That's all we knew. It's a correct relationship, it's better that they tell us the truth, than deceive us."
Minister Loizo then hinted at something about the need to keep joining as a perspective, I guess to prevent these Balkan countries from being misled into the spheres of interest of Russia, China, Turkey and the Arab countries. So, there is a perspective, but no expansion, which irresistibly reminds Vučić's present-day policy of "vindication".
At that time, an unnamed European diplomat in a statement to Politico magazine described EU enlargement as a headless chicken - still running around, it seems that something is happening, but it is already dead.
Knowing domestic conditions, and Vučić's attitude towards better democratic customs and flirting with all sides of the world, many paraphrased the famous statement of recruits from the Slovenian battlefield: We would like to join the EU, and they would like to receive us.
ORBAN FACTOR
The so-called "enlargement fatigue" is due to the decreasing willingness of the leading EU countries - primarily Germany and France - to persuade, threaten, cajole and beg in Brussels in order to reach a consensus on important issues. The principle that numerous decisions must be unanimous gives everyone the right to veto. And to get around it, fat concessions elsewhere are often required. How much it costs, the Kaczynski brothers in Poland demonstrated to the European Union for years, and now Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is doing it in the first place.
And there was a reason for divergence because the EU has been under the attack of crises for fifteen years - the Greek debt, the euro, Brexit, refugees, corona, the war in Ukraine.
In translation, the brakemen of enlargement say that the EU cannot expand before it is reformed, and there is no even a glimpse of when and how it will be reformed. No one has the imagination to imagine a scenario in which, say, Orbán renounces the veto he has.
That's why the "Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung" now comments: "Before the new members reach the end of the institutional framework of the EU, the Union itself needs a reform that includes the introduction of majority decisions. It would be irresponsible to accept new members in the current state - irresponsible to those candidates as well. Therefore, whoever wants to expand the EU by 2030 should talk less about the need for progress in Podgorica, Tirana, Chisinau or Kiev and more about reforms needed in Brussels itself".
SECOND SCHOOL
Admittedly, there is also another school of thought, heated up after the total Russian offensive on Ukraine. Today, it is embodied by the high representative of the EU, Kaja Kalas, the Estonian steel lady, for whom every policy boils down to "for" or "against" Russia. She recently wrote on Twitter that the window for EU enlargement is "wide open". "EU enlargement is a geostrategic investment in the security of the whole of Europe," she wrote, contrary to Marta Kos. It seems that the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is unable to reconcile what her colleagues are saying.
But it is not new that the member states are also asked about the enlargement at the end. And they do not individually follow a single policy. The previous German chancellor, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, said last year that it was high time to move from words to actions. "I hope that it won't take another ten years until all six countries finally become EU members," he said about Serbia and the neighborhood.
Today's chancellor, the Christian Democrat Friedrich Mertz, is neither enthusiastic nor involved in enlargement. He too is impressed by the idea of Europe in multiple speeds or in concentric circles, so he declared that the candidates should first be integrated into the common market, and then we will see each other. At the same time, he put the Balkan countries and Turkey and Ukraine in the same basket.
DEMOCRACY OR PETTY INTERESTS?
Former Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn once explained how important the negotiation process is. Before the negotiations, he said, the EU could have little influence on a country. A lot can happen during negotiations. And when the negotiations end with admission to the EU - it can't be done at all. It is clear from where the idea of full membership on the waiting list came from. But what if the extension is so far away that it can't be seen at all? When there is no carrot on the stick at all?
In that tiresome game - the bravest prognosticators from the former Democratic Opposition of Serbia claimed that Serbia (and Montenegro) would become members by 2007 - geopolitical reasons and bilateral skirmishes almost completely took precedence over democratic standards.
For years, this journalist received confidential reports from the EU Enlargement Working Group. At least once a week, diplomats, representatives of each country, meet in Brussels to talk about progress and further steps. The protocols of those meetings are a testimony of hypocrisy. For example, the European Union will open a chapter on fisheries in the negotiations with Serbia - if Serbia allows Kosovo to receive an area code. Then Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, which exorcise their whims or the problems of their minorities in Serbia.
CREDIBILITY BEEN GAMBLED
All this led some sharp pens of the European press to write about the EU's credibility being gambled away.
During the year of the rebellion in Serbia, many commentators in the visible media attributed part of the blame for the corruption and arrogance of the Serbian regime to the EU and the support in principle that Vučić had from Brussels regarding the issue of Kosovo, arming Ukraine, lithium or lucrative businesses offered by the Serbian regime. All this time, the eventual enlargement of the EU is not really a topic in the European public - except for the controversial debate when Ukraine was pushed into the negotiations over the line.
Mood is measured by polls. The last major Eurobarometer poll from March found that 56 percent of EU citizens support enlargement and 38 percent oppose it. The differences between the countries are large - while in Sweden 79 percent support the expansion of the EU, at the bottom are key members Germany (49 for, 47 against) and France (43 for, 48 against).
Given the strengthening of the right in Europe and the mainstream's fear of it, there is every chance that support for EU expansion would decline if a vigorous public debate took place. And then those few determined advocates of EU expansion would be silenced.
