Enlargement among Topics Debated at Belgrade Security Conference

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has made EU enlargement possible again and will speed it up, but Western Balkan countries shouldn’t hope that they will get on the so-called Ukrainian train without meeting criteria, it was assessed at a panel headlined “Europe: Surviving (and Thriving?) in the Geopolitical Age”, in the frames of the Belgrade Security Conference.

There were discussions on the future of Europe following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election and at a time when Russia and China are expanding their geopolitical influence. Renе Troccaz, special envoy for Western Balkans of the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, stated that though the EU would survive the current geopolitical times and grow stronger, it had to reform itself to become more efficient.

The French envoy also noted that enlargement had to be sped up as part of the global game to increase stability in Europe. He is committed to a big enlargement process, such as the so-called big bang one 20 years ago, and the whole region perhaps getting integrated into the EU at once.

“Countries from the Western Balkans have now been waiting for more than 20 years. It’s too long. We have to speed up and the reason for that is precisely because war is back on our continent, the war in Ukraine. So, new major, crucial, dramatic challenges such as the war in Ukraine, new answers for the region, new answers for the region. And we have to speed up and to push for stability,” the French envoy Troccaz stated, adding that he thought full-fledged membership was owed to the countries.

Vessela Tcherneva of the European Council on Foreign Relations said there was now much more talk on geopolitical enlargement as opposed to a merit-based enlargement process, adding that she was afraid the dilemma wasn’t very helpful because it gives the wrong signal to people in the Balkans that there could be integration simply for geopolitical reasons, “that the Ukraine train is just going to pass by and they will jump on it”.