The Challenges of “Renewed” Enlargement to the Western Balkan Countries

In the last two decades, acting as an anchor for a transition to democracy and a market economy, the EU has given membership perspectives to the Western Balkan countries of Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Croatia. At the outset, the EU triggered democratic reforms, empowered civil society organisations, and established democratic rules in those countries. However, on Croatia’s joining the EU in 2013, the Union demonstrated what can be best described as apparent enlargement fatigue and took a break from the widening of Western Balkan countries for the five subsequent years. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 revitalised the EU enlargement policy towards Western Balkan countries for security and geostrategic considerations. In that purview, this paper seeks to explore contextual constraints associated with the EU’s renewed enlargement policy towards Western Balkan countries. Using the conceptual framework of Alcaro and his co-authors (2022), it is argued that the EU renewed enlargement operates in a context driven by the following three key processes: (1) multi-actor geostrategic competition; (2) regional fragmentation; and (3) intra-EU contestation. In this context, considering international, regional, and institutional contextual constraints, the EU’s leverage on the Western Balkan countries would not be taken for granted, suggesting that the EU needs to develop hybrid strategies transcending classic tools of enlargement.