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Economic and military expansion at the height of the coronavirus pandemic . Brussels decided last week to open accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia , in a move that will increase Western influence in the sensitive Balkan region between the European Union , Russia , and Turkey .
Although the road to EU membership for both countries is still long and full of doubt, in particular since the European bloc is the target of growing criticism among its own members due to the faltering response that it has given to the COVID-19 crisis in Italy and Spain , the strategic relevance of this action is recognized by all the actors involved.
The measure adopted by the European Council , after the EU ministers for European Affairs gave their political consent to start talks during a videoconference, demonstrates that “ Europe is willing and able to take geopolitical decisions even in this trying times of coronavirus pandemic,” highlighted Olivier Varhelyi , EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement .
Varhelyi added that the “opening accession talks sends a loud and clear message not only to the two countries, yet to the Western Balkans as a whole. It reaffirms and delivers on the European Union’s commitment to the European perspective of the region: its present is with the European Union and its future is in the European Union .”
For her part, Ursula von der Leyen , President of the European Commission , tweeted that “the future of the Western Balkans is in the European Union.”
More discreetly, on March 27 North Macedonia —until 1991 a former socialist republic within the now defunct Yugoslavia —officially became the 30th member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ).
The United States Department of State declared that the U.S. as Depositary of the Treaty received the instrument of accession of North Macedonia , while NATO headquarters in Sarajevo , Bosnia and Herzegovina , held a welcoming ceremony on Tuesday.
Brigadier General William Edwards
, Commander of NATO Headquarters Sarajevo , placed the North Macedonia flag in the building of the military base in yet another of the six former constituent nations of Yugoslavia , stressing that its NATO membership “will make the Balkans safer and more stable, and its presence in the alliance will contribute to international peace and security.”
For more than a decade ago, NATO announced that it was ready to accept the landlocked country in the alliance, yet because of the conflict between Athens and Skopje that erupted after the collapse of Yugoslavia , Greece hampered the process of accession to NATO and the European Union , requiring a change of the name of the republic on historic grounds ( Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region, as well as the birthplace of King Alexander the Great .)
In 2018, Greece and then-Macedonia signed the Lake Prespa Agreement on changing the country’s name to Republic of North Macedonia ; last year, the North Macedonia Parliament approved amendments to its Constitution; on January 25, 2020, the Greek Parliament supported the modification, ending the 27-year-old conflict.
Greek objections
With the Greek objections solved, the so-called Berlin Process , set up by Germany in 2014 to keep the Balkan countries firmly on EU side, gained pace; on February, France also gave green light to the accession negotiations after it expressed, with the Netherlands and Denmark , its concerns about the European Union’s ability to bring in a region scarred by the dismembering of Yugoslavia and struggling with crime and corruption, anxious not to repeat what they believe was the rushed accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.
French President Emmanuel Macron
cautioned that EU enlargement—apparently frozen until 2025—was not a panacea for the bloc’s difficulties in speaking with one voice, and that more members also meant the need for a bigger EU budget, something northern EU members reject.
“It does not work at 27 (EU members) so do you think it will work if we are 32 or 33? We are not coherent. The implicit strategy is that we think of Europe as a big market, yet not a political power with collective preferences and a minimum of convergence,” he said.
According to the reports submitted by the European Commission to the EU’s Council, North Macedonia and Albania “had demonstrated their determination to advance the EU reform agenda and had delivered tangible and sustained results, fulfilling the conditions identified by the June 2018 Council for the opening of accession negotiations.”
However, prior to the first intergovernmental conference, Albania has to implement a number of reform measures; the EU Commission stressed the progress of one of Europe’s poorest nations in key areas, such as electoral reform, justice reform, fight against corruption, fight against organised crime, and unfounded asylum applications by Albanian citizens to EU member states.
The Council added more conditions such as tangible progress regarding reform of public administration as well as further progress in the adoption of legislation on the protection of national minorities.
It is evident, nevertheless, that Brussels does not want to lose its presence in a region located in the fault lines of Europe , Asia , North Africa and the Mediterranean , where Serbia , the state successor of Yugoslavia and regarded as a Russian ally, has denounced the lack of support from the European Union during the COVID-19 pandemic , remarking that “European solidarity does not exist, it was a fairytale.”
On the contrary, Belgrade has welcomed China’s assistance; two years ago, Beijing presided in Sofia , Bulgaria , the 7th Summit of Central and Eastern European Countries and China ( 16+1 Summit ) underscoring its investment in the region as part of the USD $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative . It has put millions into building and repairing infrastructure in Serbia , including a highway connecting Belgrade with Montenegro , and a USD $3 billion investment project for a high speed rail link between Belgrade and Budapest .
The Chinese firm COSCO operates the Greek port of Piraeus , one of several major investments in the country that has been ravaged by EU austerity since 2015. In Albania , China Everbright Group owns Tirana International Airport , and Beijing’s corporations are invested in the country’s oilfields.
In reaction to the Lake Prespa Agreement , Russia’s Permanent Envoy to Brussels , Vladimir Chizhov , warned that NATO expansion in North Macedonia would be “an effort to tackle security dangers and challenges in the 21st century with means and mechanisms from the last century. Every country, just as every citizen, certainly has the right to make mistakes, except in some cases mistakes have consequences, some of which could be severe.”
Paul Antonopoulos
, research fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies in Belgrade , commented that with its 2.6 million inhabitants (22% living in poverty), and a GDP ranked 130 in the world, Skopje’s military contribution to NATO is just symbolic.
He noted, however, “ North Macedonia is to serve as a base against Serbian and Russian influence in the Balkans , in the same way that other NATO members in the region do, as well as Kosovo’s illegal sovereignty. Of Serbia’s eight neighbours, only Bosnia and Herzegovina is not an alliance member, yet is ruled from the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.”
In light of the distancing between Serbia and the European Union , Antonopoulos said, it is unlikely Belgrade will join NATO in the near future as 89% of its population is against NATO membership according to a 2019 poll. This makes Greece and Serbia the only two countries in the Balkans where NATO is looked at negatively by the majority of the population.
The Atlantic Alliance , he added, “wants to complete the process of encircling Serbia , and has effectively made Serbia an island in the sea of anti-Russian states. NATO hopes that by encircling Serbia , it can force Belgrade to become pro-Western, something that will never happen since it was the West who orchestrated the collapse of Yugoslavia , bombed Serbia mercilessly in 1999 and protected Kosovo’s illegal independence.”
Editing by Sofía Danis
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