The EU Commission is to recommend on Tuesday (12 March) that member states open accession talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina after the country took “impressive steps” to meet the bloc’s standards, its president, Ursula von der Leyen, told a parliamentary plenary session in Strasbourg.
“Of course, more progress is necessary to join our union, but the country is showing it can deliver on the membership criteria,” von der Leyen said.
The western Balkan country formally applied to join the EU in February 2016, but has been a potential candidate since 2003 and was only granted candidate status in December 2022.
Later on Tuesday, the EU executive will present a report on Bosnia’s progress in meeting the criteria for EU membership.
“More progress has been achieved in just over a year than in a whole decade,” said the commission president, anticipating the outcome of the analysis as positive and that the EU institution will recommend to the council to formally open accession negotiations with Bosnia.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is now fully aligned with our foreign and security policy, which is crucial in these times of geopolitical turmoil,” she said, mentioning also important laws on the prevention of conflicts of interest, on money laundering and on the fight against terrorism.
So far, Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only country in the Western Balkans (out of five official candidates) that has not entered into formal accession negotiations.
The issue of enlargement will be on the agenda of the upcoming summit in Brussels next week (21-22 March), where EU leaders will have to endorse the commission’s recommendation.
The EU executive will also present a draft negotiating framework for the accession of Ukraine and Moldova this week, which will also need the green light from member states.
In early November, the commission recommended opening accession talks with both countries, but withheld a decision on Bosnia.
Austrian foreign minister Alexander Schallenberg said at the time that it would be a “geo-strategic disaster” if the EU rejected the Western Balkans in favour of Ukraine, as these countries were equally important.
The next Albania?
Vienna has been pushing to speed up enlargement negotiations with the Western Balkans, particularly with Bosnia and Herzegovina, given the long-standing partnership between the two countries — and the fact that Austrian companies are among the leading investors in the region.
“I think Bosnia-Herzegovina would be a next [safe third country] that could be a potential partner for European countries,” Michael Spindelegger, director general at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) told EUobserver in an interview in January.
Spindelegger, himself a former foreign minister of Austria, said that if Italy’s deal with Albania on asylum seekers showed positive results, other EU countries would consider doing the same, “maybe in other countries of the Western Balkans”.
“I cannot answer on behalf of the [Austrian] government, but what I hear is that they are looking at another Western Balkan country, because the difference [with other third countries] is big,” Spindelegger argued.