Rethinking EU Enlargement as Grand Strategy in the Western Balkans
- EU and strategic partners,
- EU institutional affairs,
- EU strategy and foreign policy,
- Europe in the World,
- European defence / NATO,
In June 2022, a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the European Council granted to Ukraine and Moldova candidate status hastily. Western Balkans countries, notably Albania and North Macedonia, had waited decades to be granted the same status. Four years on, progress on clusters for the Western Balkan countries remains lengthy. The decision on Ukraine and Moldova, was largely as a response to crisis rather than a product of deliberate grand strategy. For the Western Balkans countries, the lack of long-term strategic view of enlargement with security at its core, is what they have been accustomed to for some time now. This is despite that the Western Balkans continue to be a vulnerable and strategically contested region in the EUs backyard. Even with the EU’s new enlargement methodologies and current geopolitical expediency, the region has remained in an eternal waiting room. Enlargement’s credibility crisis has been made worse by this recent tension in trying to reconcile its transformative nature with current geopolitical necessity.
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(Photo credit: Attribution © European Union, 2026)