German Chancellor Friedrich Merz used the backdrop of the Adriatic coast in Tivat, Montenegro, to declare that the European Union must prove it is ready and able to expand. Standing alongside Western Balkan leaders, Merz lamented the thirteen-year drought since the bloc last admitted a new member, framing a fresh Franco-German proposal for gradual integration as a historic breakthrough.
The immediate reality is far less triumphant. Beneath the rhetoric of innovative solutions lies a desperate holding action designed to manage growing frustration in regional capitals while keeping the actual keys to Brussels firmly out of reach.
For more than two decades, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia have been trapped in an institutional waiting room. The traditional accession promise dictated that domestic reforms would yield full membership.
Russia's war against Ukraine upended that logic, creating an artificial urgency that forced Brussels to fast-track Kyiv’s candidacy. This shift caused deep resentment across the Western Balkans, where governments have spent years checking bureaucratic boxes only to watch a war-torn nation skip the queue.
The new blueprint presented by Germany and France attempts to solve this problem by offering a halfway house. Instead of full membership, candidate nations are being offered a phased approach. They would gain access to specific sectors of the single market, join programs like Erasmus+, and sit in European Council meetings as observers without voting rights.
It sounds pragmatic. In truth, it fundamentally alters the deal, offering economic crumbs while withholding the political power that defines true European integration.
The Veto Trap and the Fear of New Orbáns
The driving force behind this sudden enthusiasm for partial integration is political panic inside major Western European capitals. The European Union is structurally paralyzed by its own unanimity rules. For years, individual member states have used their veto power to hijack foreign policy and financial packages to extract domestic concessions.
Brussels is terrified of importing more volatility. If a single nation of fewer than ten million people can block a multi-billion-euro aid package or stall a major diplomatic initiative, the prospect of adding six new Balkan states with complex, overlapping bilateral disputes sends shivers through Paris and Berlin.
This fear has generated a highly controversial legal mechanism currently being discussed in the hallways of the European Commission. Under these proposals, future member states would be stripped of their automatic veto rights for an extended period after joining.
Montenegro, which is currently the frontrunner to become the twenty-eighth member state with an ambitious target date of 2028, would likely serve as the guinea pig for this policy.
Writing a time-limited ban on veto powers into an accession treaty would create a two-tier system. It fractures the foundational myth of the bloc: that all member states are legally equal.
Supporters argue it is the only way to make expansion politically palatable to a skeptical French public. Critics see it as an act of diplomatic bait-and-switch that turns new members into second-class citizens.
A Single Market Without a Political Voice
The core of the Franco-German non-paper centers on building blocks. If a candidate nation completes reforms in a specific sector, such as energy, digital policy, or critical raw materials, it can participate in relevant EU formats without waiting for full accession. The prize being held out is access to the single market, potentially mirroring the status of nations in the European Economic Area.
This approach overlooks the fundamental imbalance of the arrangement. Accepting the single market means adopting thousands of pages of complex European regulations without having any say in how those laws are written.
Balkan businesses would have to comply with strict emissions trading systems, industrial strategies, and sanitary rules drafted entirely in Brussels. Their ministers would sit in Council rooms as silent observers, unable to alter a single line of text or cast a vote to protect their national interests.
Furthermore, this gradual integration is explicitly designed to be reversible. If a Balkan government backslides on democratic standards or rule-of-law principles, Brussels can revoke its market access and lock the door.
Given how fluid politics can be in Southeastern Europe, this creates an incredibly unstable environment for long-term foreign investment. A business looking to build a factory in North Macedonia or Serbia needs regulatory certainty, not a trade agreement that could vanish after the next election cycle.
Regional Fractures and the Limits of Economic Incentives
The European Union’s strategy relies heavily on the assumption that cash and market access can smooth over deep-seated historical and territorial rivalries. The six-billion-euro Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans is designed to double the size of the regional economies over the next decade.
Money cannot buy a solution for foundational statehood disputes. Kosovo’s path is completely blocked by its unresolved relationship with Serbia, and five current EU member states do not even recognize its independence.
North Macedonia has repeatedly overhauled its own constitution and even changed its national name to appease its neighbors, only to face fresh historical and cultural vetoes from Bulgaria.
Bosnia and Herzegovina remains paralyzed by internal constitutional dysfunction that billions in pre-accession funding cannot fix.
Montenegro remains the sole plausible candidate for near-term entry, having opened all negotiation chapters. Even its 2028 target is viewed by most seasoned observers in Brussels as wild optimism. The country still faces monumental hurdles regarding judicial corruption and organized crime.
By treating the entire region as a single bloc while offering individual, fragmented pathways to market access, the EU risks exacerbating regional inequalities rather than fostering stability.
The Fractured Promise
The rhetoric coming out of the Tivat summit serves a clear geopolitical purpose. It sends a message to Moscow and Beijing that the Western Balkans remain firmly within the European orbit. By offering roaming-free mobile data and access to electronic payment systems, Brussels can claim it is delivering tangible benefits to ordinary citizens.
These micro-successes mask a broader failure of political will. The classic promise of European expansion is dead. In its place stands a complex web of associate memberships, sector-by-sector integration, and conditional market access that keeps the periphery dependent on the core.
By refusing to reform its own internal voting mechanisms while simultaneously denying full political equality to new applicants, the European Union has created an expansion process that is designed to look like progress while ensuring nothing fundamentally changes.
