Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, whose country holds the Presidency of the EU Council, said on Thursday 9 January that the EU-Western Balkans summit, to be held on 7 May in Zagreb, 20 years after the very first such summit, also in Zagreb, would mark “a new page in the history of enlargement”.
And while Croatia is working “hard” on the issue of enlargement, it remains cautious on concrete objectives, due to the reluctance of some Member States to make progress on the subject.
Thus, the thorny issue of opening EU accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania should not be on the summit’s agenda, which is intended to be “a basis for future relations with the six countries in the region”, according to Mr Plenković. “We believe that our initiative can represent added value for the whole EU, as we have more knowledge about the accession process”, he added at a press conference with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, in Zagreb. Croatia is the most recent country to join the EU, in 2013.
The question of opening negotiations should be discussed ahead of the summit in March. Mr Michel said he would work with Mr Plenković “in the coming weeks” to develop “stronger political preparation in order to have clarity” and, he hoped, a “clear signal” for the countries of the Western Balkans. According to him, enlargement is one of the issues that should require “great mobilisation” of the European institutions.
In order to satisfy several Member States, including France, which have complained about the methodology of the accession process, the Commission is currently working on a new methodology. It could be presented on 29 January.
The President of the European Council and the Croatian Prime Minister expressed confidence that the enlargement process could move forward after the change in methodology. According to Mr Plenković, France had reservations of a “conceptual” nature about the methodology: is it good or not? Thus, if the Commission’s paper is “well received” by Paris, “we will already have taken a big step forward”. He added that he felt a positive development after his meeting with the French President on Tuesday in Paris.
Mr Plenković said that there was a need for synergy between the modification of the process and “a few concrete steps, measured, verified, valued by the Commission” on the part of Skopje and Tirana, which could be achieved in the “fairly short time frame” allowed to satisfy certain member states which had felt that the two countries still needed to make progress before opening their negotiations.
“I am convinced that it is possible to make progress, if we agree on some guidelines for modernising the accession process and give a clear signal to these countries [in the Western Balkan] on the kind of relations we want to have with them”, Mr Michel explained, recalling that there are other countries in the Western Balkans. “We have to see how to prevent future difficulties by ensuring that these countries are connected to the EU”, he added.
However, the President of the European Council acknowledged that the “strategic dialogue” between Member States on the modernisation of the process would “be complicated”. “The issue of reversibility [of the process], among others, needs to be discussed at the highest European political level”, he said. This principle, strongly defended by France, is already present in the current methodology.
One Croatian official, on condition of anonymity, hoped to have a date for the opening of accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia before the summit on 7 May. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)