Pandemic Emergency and Relations between EU and Western Balkans
Vincenzo Maria Di Mino; Marco Siragusa[1]
Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic has been profoundly affected the economic and political structures of European governance, questioning its foundation and relations among the countries. Within this dynamic context, two non-exclusive options come out. The first one is the “national territorialisation” of the health crisis, with a response in security and emergency terms, the closure of borders and the identification of the virus as a ‘foreign’ destabilising agent. The second one goes in the direction of a greater assumption of responsibility, both fiscal and political, on the part of European institutions, in terms of economic solidarity and loan facilities towards the countries most affected by the viral wave.
In this sense, the Recovery Fund could open a new phase of the European federal project. It arrived at the end of a two-month period of negotiations which focuses on the centrality of the amount of debt contracted and seeks a way out of the austerity policies of previous seasons and cautiously imposing the overcoming of national interests. The new European project could change the relations between member states but also with the external partners such as the “candidate or potential member states” of the Western Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania).
The enlargement process, which engages these countries, is suffering a lack of credibility and a dangerous stalemate. The Recovery Fund, the Next Generation EU plan combined with the new enlargement strategy adopted in March could give a new framework for the external action of the EU. The Union must also face the increasingly active protagonism of other actors in the region, such as Turkey, Russia and especially China, which during the pandemic acquired further margins of action.
EU members know that the coming years will be decisive for the European path of the Western Balkans. How are they preparing for this? This paper wants to analyse how the member states managed the pandemic and how the actions taken posed new challenges to the EU decision-making system. The new balances and the change of direction implemented by the European institutions with respect to the economic crisis of 2008 also require reflection on relations with partners in the Western Balkans. Will the pandemic impose a change of direction also in the enlargement policy favouring a renewed and more concrete process of democratisation of the countries involved or, on the contrary, will it continue to deepen anti-democratic tendencies?
[1] Vincenzo Maria Di Mino, Independent researcher on political and social theory, Italy;
Marco Siragusa, Ph.D in International Studies, University of Naples “L’Orientale”.