1 I went to Montenegro for the Berlin Process Summit. A seven-hour drive along Balkan roads, a hundred borders, waiting, security checks… Just enough time to think and get depressed.
While waiting in the queues at the borders, I recalled that I had also reported from Berlin, from the very first Summit in 2014, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel launched an initiative for the six Western Balkan countries to function as a common market, promote the free movement of people, remove barriers to trade and investment, ensure the mutual recognition of diplomas, build motorways and railways, overcome historical disputes so that, once prepared and reconciled, we might all one day join the European Union together.
What enthusiasm that sparked. What optimism. What hope that things were finally moving forward. It feels like only yesterday. Yet 12 years have passed.
Then I remembered that I had also reported from the second Berlin Process Summit, held in Vienna in August 2015. What has particularly stayed with me are the words of the then EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini. After all the usual diplomatic responses, full of evasive language, at one point she said something that sounded so simple, so logical and so encouraging: “Well, of course the Western Balkans belong in the European Union. Otherwise, what are we supposed to do with these countries?”
In the meantime, Merkel left. Scholz arrived. Then Scholz left, too. Now Merz is in office. The Berlin Process continues. I can cross the borders into the other five Western Balkan countries using only my ID card, there are no roaming charges between us, and while our roads and railways are terrible, we’re receiving European funds for infrastructure, and some of it is actually being built… Things are moving forward.
But to be honest, I find it depressing to hear, for the thousandth time, the same line Mogherini delivered eleven years ago, that the Western Balkans are part of Europe.
I find it even more depressing to hear European leaders claim that bilateral disputes mustn’t stand in the way of enlargement. Yet the very thing blocking our European future is precisely a bilateral dispute with an EU member state that essentially boils down to historical revanchism, bickering over historical figures and holidays, the sort of petty squabbling you’d expect at a village festival, but which an EU member state has elevated to the level of official state policy.
What I find most depressing is that we’re reliving 2008, when, following the Greek veto on our NATO membership in Bucharest, the government under Nikola Gruevski refused to face reality or seek a solution, and we entered an 11-year period of authoritarian, oligarchic rule, with plenty of patriotic speeches, plenty of monuments and very little prospect of joining Europe.
Now we once again have a government that refuses to face reality. Day in and day out, we’re lectured on patriotism. We see them whining abroad about why we aren’t being admitted, while back home they play the hero, vowing not to budge even a single millimetre. They even preach about the need to have more children, claiming that otherwise there’ll be no one left to work for the Balkan economic giant that we are. Why would we have children? So they can obtain Bulgarian passports and head off to the European Union as Bulgarians?
2 In fact, the VMRO-DPMNE governments have a long history of denying reality. They’ve never stepped up when it came to supporting EU integration. Whenever difficult decisions had to be made, they played dumb and accused others of betrayal. They opposed joining the United Nations under the provisional reference “FYROM”. They opposed the name compromise that got us into NATO, yet now they enjoy the benefits of that very “betrayal”.
They’ve been in power for two years but are still obsessed with the decisions of the previous government. Meanwhile, we haven’t seen a single decision from them on how to overcome the current blockade.
There’s nothing patriotic about refusing to address the real problem your country is facing.
3 And honestly, let them at least admit Montenegro into the European Union. Perhaps that would restore our own hope. It would show us that it’s possible. It would show us that the enlargement process can lead to actual accession and full membership and that painful compromises can ultimately earn you a seat at the table where decisions are made. Just let Montenegro in and stop nitpicking.
Kudos to Angela Merkel, who launched the Berlin Process initiative 12 years ago. And kudos to Germany for its efforts to prepare the region for European integration.
The European Union will have to excuse me, but they’re nitpicking. They’re really nitpicking.
It’s as if they, too, don’t want to face reality. As if they aren’t aware of what’s happening on the ground. As if they don’t see how many people are leaving, how the countries of the Western Balkans are emptying out, how people are losing faith in the European idea and how much room this creates for authoritarian politicians who feed off that hopelessness.
I mean, honestly, they’re really nitpicking. They’re still debating roaming charges at their summits. They can’t agree on whether to stop charging us for the very air that carries our voices across EU borders.
On top of that, they’ve complicated every interaction we have with them through their new entry-exit system and all the hassle at the borders. It’s as if they specifically want to punish us, the citizens of the Western Balkans. Is this what facing reality looks like to some bureaucrat in Brussels who has absolutely no clue how deeply these citizens are connected to their EU neighbours in Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria through everyday contact? Through family ties, mixed marriages, business, students, the entertainment scene, culture, friendships, tourism, shopping, real estate, medical treatment, weddings, funerals…
So, my friends, dear European friends, what could you possibly see from us that’s so terrifying and that you haven’t already seen?
4 And so, as I waited in the queue at yet another border crossing on my way home from Montenegro, through Albania and Kosovo, it occurred to me that in the 12 years of the Berlin Process, the only thing that has definitely changed is the German chancellor – Merkel, Scholz and now Merz.
Meanwhile, we remain just as distant from one another, and just as far from the EU, as we were 12 years ago.
Translated by Nikola Gjelincheski
