Marika Djolai

Inserted 3 years ago

“There are many internal issues, from battling the coronavirus pandemic, to rise of populism, to the rebellion of individual member states and to ultimately confusion about when the EU can join forces and think strategically about Europe as a whole. The EU accession process has become hostage to the crisis of individual states. EU does not have a mechanism to deal with internal issues, because the consensus of all 27 member states is needed for such decisions, such as confirming the negotiations framework for the two countries. So if any problem arises, there are no inside mechanisms, except diplomacy and background diplomacy, to unblock such problems. It also shows that the accession process itself is not separated from bilateral problems that maybe exist between two countries, and because not separated, that is one of the biggest issues. Any of these problems can affect and is affecting the EU’s accession process at any point for candidate countries.”

Europeanwesternbalkans

Senior Researcher and Head of Conflict and Security Cluster at the European Centre for Minority Issues