Five EU states push gradual single market access for Western Balkans

Five European Union member states have urged the European Commission to reconsider its approach to integrating candidate countries from the Western Balkans into the bloc’s single market, presenting the move as a way to keep aspiring members out of Russia’s sphere of influence.

Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Slovakia and Slovenia said in a document circulated among the EU’s 27 member states in Brussels last Friday that “strong and attractive incentives are needed to maintain the momentum of enlargement and advance European integration.”

“Merit-based access to the European single market – if necessary on a gradual basis – represents such an incentive,” the document said.

The five countries are part of an informal group that politically supports the Western Balkans’ EU membership ambitions.

They described the proposed model as “systematic sectoral integration.” Under the approach, countries such as Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia would gain access to a broader range of EU programmes as they progressively align with Brussels’ rulebook on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

“When a candidate country demonstrates a high degree of alignment with the EU acquis in the relevant sector, gradual integration … should be actively and systematically pursued,” the document said.

It also stated that the framework should include measures to address potential backsliding by countries granted privileged access to the EU market.

The paper proposed several additional sectors that could be opened to candidate countries, including transport, energy and electricity markets, the digital single market, competitiveness strategies and critical raw materials policies.

It also cited a UK-EU youth mobility agreement as an example of a benefit that could be extended to Balkan countries.

However, in terms of ambition, the document falls short of ideas outlined last week by Albanian Foreign Minister Ferit Hoxha in an interview with Euractiv.

Hoxha argued that candidate countries should be granted observer status in EU institutions as they close negotiation chapters.

Milan Nič, a senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said he was not particularly impressed by the document’s substance and argued that it did not significantly depart from previous concepts.

“This looks like a slightly more sophisticated version of earlier attempts at gradual integration,” Nič said.

The document’s authors called on Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos to develop new proposals along those lines.

“This approach would expand and strengthen the single market, contribute to the EU’s geoeconomic relevance and strategic autonomy, while bringing candidate countries closer to the EU and helping counter the influence of third countries,” the document said.