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Yes, the Balkans can accede

This French non-paper is roiling the Balkans: while promising eventual accession for all the countries of the region, it proposes tightening up on conditionality and allowing for reversibility.

That is good, not bad. Sharply criticized for blocking the opening of negotiations with Albania and Macedonia, Paris is taking a major step in the right direction by reaffirming that the goal is full membership and specifying precisely what President Macron wants to re-initiate the accession process.

The criticism of this move comes from two directions.

Some see the non-paper as an effort to postpone re-initiation of the process with Macedonia and Albania even further. I suppose that is a likely effect, since it will take time for the European Union to sort out what it wants to do with the French proposal, but there is nothing to prevent Skopje and Tirana from using the time to adopt and implement as many parts of the acquis communautaire as they can. The “negotiations” are not really much more than verification of progress in achieving implementation. All candidate countries know what they need to do to qualify for the EU. The faster they get on with it, the quicker they will get there.

Others say there are aspects of the French proposal that fail to take into account what is already being done. I imagine that might be true. I am not in a position to judge the details. It will certainly take some time for the other member states to evaluate and propose revisions to what the French have put forward. But if the result is a clearer and stricter set of conditions for EU membership, I see no reason not to applaud. Backsliding is all too apparent in the Balkans, including in current member Croatia. Scholarship has revealed interesting reasons for this, including the way the EU is currently conducting the accession process. Straightening that out might not accelerate accession, but it would improve performance in the candidate states.

I am a fan of strict conditionality: there is no reason for current EU member states to invite as a new member any state that is unwilling to meet the requirements of membership. But how it is achieved–path dependency in political science terms–is important. Natasha Wunsch and Solveig Richter propose this:

If thorough democratic transformation still remains the EU’s goal in the region, conditionality needs to be complemented with a more comprehensive and deliberate empowerment of national parliaments and civil society actors as a counterweight to dominant executives. Favouring domestic deliberation rather than incentive-driven compliance should go a long way in ensuring the sustainability of rule of law and democratic reforms even once the Western Balkan countries have eventually become EU members.

I’m not sure this empowerment of civil society and national parliaments will be sufficient, but it seems to me a reasonable experiment to embark on. I think it also important to train up an independent civil service that remains in place with changing governments and to protect the independence of the judiciary and the media. The trouble with conditionality as currently pursued, as I read Richter and Wunsch, is that it strengthens executive power. Balancing that with constraining institutions is the right way to go.

In any event, those in the Balkans who want to see real reform should welcome the French proposal and hope the EU will get on expeditiously with whatever changes it wants to make in the accession process. And in the meanwhile, those serious about accession will be working hard implementing the acquis as swiftly as possible, to be ready when the political window to the EU opens once again.