The Rule of Law in the context of the European Union's Western Balkans Enlargement Policy (original) (raw)
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The EU Rule of Law Initiative Towards the Western Balkans
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 2020
The EU adopted a new enlargement strategy for the Western Balkans countries in 2018, provided a time frame for Serbia and Montenegro potentially to join the Union by 2025, and outlined the next steps for accession for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. In March 2020, the EU gave the green light to the opening of accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania, and also introduced a new reformed ‘accession talks’ framework. The strengthening of the rule of law, fighting corruption and organised crime are the cornerstones of the EU-Western Balkans strategy of 2018 and the new accession talks framework of 2020. This article examines the latest enlargement policy developments in 2018–2020 by conceptualising how the EU promotes the rule of law in the Western Balkans thorough its new enlargement policy package. Furthermore, the article offers an in-depth analysis of the case of Albania, where the EU has experimented with some of its latest enlargement-policy id...
Hague Journal on the Rule of Law, 2022
EU enlargement has always been a political process. That said, the rule of law is an important aspect and principle of the EU enlargement policy. Implementation of EU driven reforms in candidate countries largely depends on the rule of law-based enlargement as well as on a clear EU perspective. Overpoliticisation of the enlargement process renders the EU’s enlargement law futile and undermines both the transformative effect of the pre-accession process and EU’s own values. The implementation of the enlargement condition for settlement of bilateral disputes, which became pronounced in the EU enlargement towards the Western Balkan countries, is having the negative effect of contributing to deterioration rather than promotion of the rule of law in both EU candidate countries and the EU’s enlargement process. Lack of predictability and rule of law accordingly, makes the effective application of the principle of conditionality impossible. A genuine reconsideration of the condition for se...
2020
This paper deals with the failures in the promotion of the rule of law in the six countries of the Western Balkans that are in different stages of their EU accession process. Drawing on concrete examples from more than two decades of rule of law promotion through the enlargement circles, the paper identifies the different evolutionary stages of this undertaking. It finds that the current dominant paradigm of rule of law conditionality concerning the benchmarking of progress in the areas of Chapters 23 and 24 of the acquis fails to tackle state capture as the main structural obstacle to the rule of law in the Western Balkans. The paper proposes that this situation is to be improved by re-imagining rule of law promotion as an effort focused not merely on standards but on building a rule of law constituency. Four different approaches to rule of law promotion that have been less frequently used so far are offered: legal mobilisation, institutional strengthening, the politicisation of an...
Promoting the Rule of Law in the EU Enlargement Policy: A Twofold Challenge
CYELP 17, 2021
Since the rule of law was introduced into the EU enlargement policy, its role within the conditionality policy has advanced gradually so that it has become the cornerstone of the accession process. This paper analyses the evolution of the rule of law promotion in the process of EU enlargement with a focus on the Western Balkans and strives to identify what the main challenges are in this regard and the main reasons why the EU has made the rule of law central to its new enlargement methodology. Drawing on the experience of the Europeanisation process of the CEE countries, the paper examines the different approaches in terms of the promotion of the rule of law within the Copenhagen political accession criteria. It finds that with regard to the accession process of the Western Balkans, the EU is no longer satisfied with ‘reforms on paper’ and strives to apply more active leverage. However, the internal challenges for the rule of law within the EU and the often ‘neglected’ fourth Copenhagen criterion − absorption capacity of the Union itself referring to its capability to include new members − also affect the process. Rule of law conditionality has been compromised not only by more focus on the box-ticking benchmark fulfilment exercise than on substance, but also by the lack of credibility on the side of the EU that has undermined the pre-accession conditionality. The most illustrative case in this regard is the accession process of North Macedonia that is analysed as a case study in order to identify the main challenges and shortcomings of the EU enlargement policy. The paper proposes that the rule of law promotion and the overall Europeanisation process must rest on a credible merit-based accession process that involves clear commitments on both sides − candidate countries but also the EU.
Western Balkans and the EU enlargement process
The paper analyses the EU enlargement policy in the Western Balkans in the context of the EU’s global political aspirations. The first part offers a short overview of the enlargement process from the end of the Cold War until the present. The author divides the evolution of the enlargement process into four stages. The key features and the most important novelties of each stage are presented. The second part of the paper investigates the causes for the changes in the EU enlargement policy. It is argued that the changes can only be understood if the enlargement process is placed inside the wider context of the EU’s global political aspirations and its ambitions to become a global civilian power. The enlargement policy has always reflected the state of the EU’s Common Foreign Security Policy.
Europeanization forms an integral part of the strategy of expansion and is a powerful instrument that can influence reforms and changes in countries striving toward integration. At the same time, EU conditionality is also an instrument with limited effect on democratization and Europeanization. In this context, this chapter focuses on conditionality as one of the dominant and most developed approach of the European Union and tries to analyse which reforms in the area of rule of law have been made as a result of this instrument. The chapter will study whether the EU institutions had influence, and of what kind, on implementation of the rule of law in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From this basic analytical framework, a subset of more concrete research questions follows: what are the EU requirements developed in the monitoring process? Which organizational-institutional reforms have been made? Which gate-keeper elites resisted these reforms? Who (critical civil society actors) supported these reforms? What have the effects been and how have they changed over the last decade with regard to benchmarks of independence, responsibility, efficiency, and effectiveness?
The Seventh EU Enlargement and Beyond: Pre-Accession Policy vis-à-vis the Western Balkans Revisited
10 Croatian Yearbook of European Law and Policy (2014) 1-37
The accession of Croatia to the European Union is yet another milestone in the history of EU enlargements. After seven enlargement rounds the membership has increased from the original six founding countries to twenty-eight Member States. Many claim, quite rightly, that the enlargement policy is the most successful of the EU’s foreign policy tools. Even those who bring this bold argument into doubt have to agree that, when contrasted with other external policies, and the European Neighbourhood Policy in particular, the overall balance sheet of the enlargement policy is positive. The accession of Croatia is symbolic in a number of ways. As argued in this article, it closes one big chapter in the history of EU enlargements but, at the same time, opens another. Croatia is – most likely – the last country to join the EU this decade. After a sometimes painful pre-accession process it has proved to be a ‘success story’ of the stabilisation and association process. As the European Commission claims, it is living proof that the raison d'être and mechanics of the policy employed vis-à-vis the Western Balkans has its merits. However, a quick look into the future proves that the next enlargements will be a far more complicated affair. The current list of candidates and potential candidates is a mix of a heavyweight (Turkey) and the Western Balkan countries, all struggling to meet the fundamental prerequisites for a democracy based on the rule of law. Failure to comply with the Copenhagen criteria, together with a dwindling appetite for further enlargement among some Member States, create a rather dangerous mix. This article argues that following recent enhancements to the pre-accession policy, further improvements are necessary to make future expansions of the European Union possible. If only from the geo-political perspective, this is in the joint interest of the European Union, its Member States and the countries of the Western Balkans.
The EU and Member State Building: European Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans
2014
This book critically examines the process of statebuilding by the EU, focusing on its attempts to build Member States in the Western Balkan region. This book analyses the European Union's policies towards, and the impact they have, upon the states of the Western Balkans, and assesses how these affect the nature of EU foreign policy. To this end, it focuses on the tools and mechanisms that the EU employs in its enlargement policy and examines the new instruments of direct intervention (in Bosnia and Kosovo), political coercion (in the case of Croatia and Serbia in relation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), and stricter conditionality in the Western Balkan countries. The book discusses the key aim of this special form of statebuilding, which is to establish functional liberal-democratic states in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia in order for them to join the EU and to cope with the responsibilities and pressures of membership in the future. However, the authors argue that while the EU sees itself as an international actor that promotes and protects liberal-democratic values, norms and principles, its experiences in the Western Balkans demonstrate how the EU´s actions in the region have undermined the basic principles of democratic decision-making (such as the European support for impositions in Bosnia) and international law (Kosovo), and have consequently contributed to new tensions (see police reform in Bosnia, and the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia) and dependencies. This book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, EU politics, global governance and IR/Security Studies in general.