Serbia and Montenegro could be set to join the European Union as early as 2025, according to a new action plan launched by Brussels.
The EU enlargement plan for the Western Balkans, presented by the European Commission on Tuesday, offers a path to membership for the two Balkan states as well as their neighbours Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia.
To join by 2025 both Serbia and Montenegro would have to improve their rule of law and governance, while Serbia would also have to urgently normalise its diplomatic relations with its neighbour Kosovo.
Because of the region’s difficult politics, the new strategy also calls for measures to stop Balkan countries that make it into the EU first from being able to veto the membership of neighbouring countries who want to join after.
Concerns about the countries’ internal political systems have also led the Commission to stipulate that a “more effective system” of tackling rule of law breaches in member states should be in place EU-wide before states from the Western Balkans are admitted.
That latter demand comes as the EU struggles with alleged rule of law breaches relating to Poland’s judiciary on the other side of the continent.
Serbia and Montenegro are already official EU candidate countries and have started the negotiating process with the bloc. Albania and Macedonia are also formal candidates but have not yet opened talks, despite having signed association agreements.
Bosnia is not yet a candidate country but signed an association agreement with the EU in 2015 and has applied to be one. Kosovo has yet to apply, partly because of its disputed status.
Each of the Western Balkan countries outside the EU suffers from unique obstacles to joining. Macedonia’s naming dispute with Greece counts against it, while Serbia’s relatively recent hostilities with Kosovo still linger in the air.