There is a very good reason to admit the countries of the Western Balkans into the EU as quickly as possible. There is a very good reason not to do so, under no circumstances. There is a way to resolve this radical contradiction. This solution would be entirely logical. This possibility is practically unfeasible, for reasons that are entirely logical.
On the surface, the EU has displayed an ambivalent stance at all EU-Western Balkans summits in recent years: The EU reaffirms its commitment to pursuing enlargement with the Western Balkan countries but cannot specify a timeframe. (October 2021). The Western Balkan states should join the EU as soon as possible, with the emphasis not on “soon” but on “as possible” (November 2022). The European Commission welcomes new momentum and fresh impetus in the negotiations, but there should be no shortcuts (December 2024). The Western Balkans are, of course, part of the European family, but there are still many steps to take in the EU accession process (October 2025).
There is a very good reason to admit the countries of the Western Balkans into the EU as quickly as possible. That reason is peace. I recall the Balkan Crisis of 1875–1878, which ultimately led to the Balkan Wars of 1912–13—which, in my view, should be seen not as a prelude to, but as the beginning of, World War I. Rising nationalist movements sought to tear apart the multi-ethnic and multicultural empires of old Europe (hence the term “powder keg” for the Balkans) in order to establish ethnically defined nation-states, which then fought each other with great brutality over territory, persecuted minorities within their respective territories, forced them to flee, or murdered them, until they themselves—as small nation-states—became helpless minorities caught in the struggle between the great ideologies of violence of the 20th century, ground down without protection between fascism and Stalinism. One could say that, for European civilization, the gates of hell first opened in the Balkans, and that what flared up there eventually became a global conflagration.
This continues to have repercussions to this day, in all the grotesque forms of wounded national pride and thirst for revenge. Every small, ethnically defined nation-state has, within its entirely arbitrary political borders, minorities belonging to the neighboring state’s ethnic group, just as it has minorities of its own ethnic group in neighboring states—minorities it feels compelled to aggressively defend, under so-called “neighborhood policy,” against the impositions of the majority ethnic group there. Or the ethnic groups share a state without a unifying national ideology on an equal footing, which leads to a competing dual nationalism within a single nation, but never to the development of a common community or a shared legal framework.
The European Union emerged precisely as a consequence of these very distortions—as a lesson learned from the nationalist wars of aggression, as a peace project aimed at overcoming old national enmities.
The European peace project has settled the age-old enmity between Germany and France and resolved it through cooperation—who, if not the European Union, should bring peace to the Western Balkans, this central part of Europe, and resolve the irrational, obsessive, nationalist tensions through a shared post-national development? This should have been clear at the latest after the breakup of Yugoslavia in a civil war as senseless as it was tragic.
Is this possible with a dose of political pragmatism? First, one should ask why pragmatism in politics is always regarded as a last resort, even though all our experience shows that pragmatism only ever serves as an intermediate step, only to ultimately fail in solving a problem. This is illustrated, for example, by the Dayton Agreement, a prime example of the possibilities and definitive limitations of political pragmatism: it brought peace between ethnic groups without eliminating the root causes of the conflict, which naturally continue to smolder. The agreement ended a war—that is true—but nothing can be built upon it.
But if these countries were to join the EU, the mere elimination of national borders would make it completely irrelevant which ethnic group is the majority or minority in which territory; at the same time, the common legal framework would grant all people equal rights and opportunities in life.
There is a very good reason not to do this—under no circumstances. And that reason is the EU’s political system. Since the Treaty of Lisbon—which is the greatest fall from grace of the European unification project and the reason for the stalemate in the EU’s development—the European Council, the institution comprising national heads of state and government and national ministers, has been the EU’s highest decision-making body. This means that it is not the European people’s representative body—that is, the European Parliament—but rather the representatives of the nation-states who decide on Europe’s post-national development. This is the fundamental contradiction. And just as much as the large European states wanted precisely this system in order to assert their interests and prevent developments that would limit their sovereignty, they now fear the consequences should the Western Balkan states join the EU. For then every small Balkan state with two or three million inhabitants could cast a veto against the wishes of the large member states and block their interests. Added to this is the fact that every new member state would be entitled to a commissioner in the European Commission, which would mean having to invent entirely new portfolios for these new commissioners—indeed, one would have to invent them absurdly, since all the traditional policy areas are already covered by the Commission. But it would make the Commission even more cumbersome, and at the same time more vulnerable to the infiltration of special national interests.
Nobody wants that. It would fuel the renationalization of the EU—and that is an interesting dialectic: it would run counter to the national interests of the major powers, which pushed through this system to defend national sovereignty, and at the same time it would run counter to the interests of those who defend the original idea, namely the development of a post-national Europe.
There is a way to resolve this radical contradiction. This solution would be entirely logical. Those who bear responsibility for European policy today must have the courage to carry out a systemic reform of the EU and to make the case for its necessity to the European public.
The European Commission would have to be restored to its original role, namely to develop European Community law independently of national interests; the commissioners would have to be elected by the European Parliament rather than appointed by nation-states, in a number corresponding to the reasonably necessary portfolios rather than the number of member states; a parliamentary majority would have to hold decision-making authority; and the Council must be stripped of its power. Under the current system, however, the Council would have to agree to this. It will never do so. And this brings us to the rationale behind the statement: This possibility is practically unfeasible, for reasons that are entirely logical.
One could now discuss at length why so much was possible for so long, until development became stuck in this logic that no longer allows for a way out.
So much has been lost in world history—naturally, without the consent of those who had profited from the situation beforehand. The question has always been: Could we build upon what came before, or did we have to build upon the ruins of what came before? As for Europe’s future—the future of a Europe that is truly European, a Europe in which Western Europeans in the Balkans feel the heartbeat of the people rather than the delusion of ethnicity—I dare not make any predictions.
I have reasons for pessimism. I have grandchildren; I force myself to hope.
Robert Menasse is an Austrian writer, essayist and translator. Among his best-known books are “The Capital” (2018), “Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits” (2019) and “Die Erweiterung”, his novelistic portrait of the state of European politics in the twenty-first century.
