Enlargement of the European Union is, almost imperceptibly, moving forward once more. EU foreign ministers are expected next week to forward Albania’s membership application to the European Commission for an opinion. This is a necessary technical step on the path to entry – small, but important.
The Commission is already preparing opinions on the applications of Iceland and Montenegro. The opinions will take quite some time to deliver – longer for Albania and Montenegro than for Iceland – but the machinery is now in motion.
There are signs of progress elsewhere, too. For a long time Serbia’s efforts to draw closer to the EU have been held back by the refusal of the Netherlands to permit implementation of Serbia’s EU stabilisation and association agreement. The Dutch insist that Serge Brammertz, the chief United Nations war crimes prosecutor, must first of all declare that Serbia is fully complying with its efforts to capture war crimes suspects – principally, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander.
Brammertz is due to hand his latest report to the UN Security Council in early December, and the Serbian government appears confident that it will be positive. That would remove the Dutch veto and allow Serbia to make a formal application for EU membership.
Meanwhile, Croatia’s bid to join the EU is back on track after a compromise over a maritime border dispute with Slovenia. One possible complication here is that Slovenia may hold a referendum to approve the deal.
Nor will it be plain sailing for Albania. As Olli Rehn, the EU enlargement commissioner, pointed out this week, the Albanian socialist opposition has been boycotting parliament since the national election of June 28. The boycott “does not respect European democratic standards”, Rehn said, and could damage Albania’s chances of being granted the formal status of an EU membership candidate.
Of all the countries with EU aspirations, there remain serious problems over Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey and a frustrating deadlock over Macedonia. But the recent movement on enlargement is encouraging, nonetheless. Enlargement has been one of the EU’s great foreign policy success stories. With the Lisbon treaty finally in place, it’s time to step up the pace.
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