EU to replenish ranks with western Balkans post-Brexit

Bloomberg

Serbia and Montenegro may join the European Union by 2025, the bloc’s executive will say, urging the western Balkan countries to improve the rule of law, curb corruption and put aside past grudges to enter the world’s largest trading club.
The EU is offering a path to membership two decades after the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Along with other ex-communist nations from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the ex-Yugoslav states of Croatia and Slovenia have joined the 28-member bloc and are benefiting from improved trade and billions of euros in development funds.
After a decade of financial crises, the largest refugee inflows since World War II and Brexit, European leaders are looking to expand the EU’s ranks. But an alleged coup attempt
in Montenegro, unrest in the parliaments of Macedonia and Albania and tensions between Serbia and Kosovo underscore the risks of renewed violence.
“Overall, significant progress has been made both on reforms and on overcoming the devastating legacy of war and conflict,” the European Commission will say in a draft report seen by Bloomberg. “But in order for the countries to meet all membership conditions and strengthen their democracies, comprehensive and convincing reforms are still required in crucial areas, notably on the rule of law, competitiveness, and regional cooperation and reconciliation.”
The commission will debate the report on the EU Enlargement Strategy in the Western Balkans with European lawmakers in Strasbourg. Bulgaria, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, will hold asummit in Sofia in May to discuss the matter. The Serbian dinar was little changed at 118.55 against the euro at 9:01 am in Belgrade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The yield on its dollar bond maturing in 2021 rose five basis points to 3.51 percent. By 2025, “the EU could become larger than 27 members,” according to the report.
Accession talks may begin with Albania and the Republic of Macedonia on the basis of fulfilled conditions, according to the report. Bosnia and Herzegovina can become a candidate “with sustained effort,” it said.
“That’s an indicative date—an encouragement so that the parties concerned work hard to follow that path,” Jean-Claude Juncker, who leads the EU’s executive arm, told EU lawmakers. “We wish to see enlargement in the western Balkans; it’s not that I want them to enter without fulfilling the conditions, however—they haven’t met the conditions yet and some are far from that.”
For Serbia to progress, it must normalise relations with Kosovo in a legally binding agreement. All countries must introduce measures to uphold judicial independence and tackle organised crime and graft. The commission said it’s reaching out to the countries on the continent’s southeastern fringe to make a “geostrategic investment in a stable, strong and united Europe based on common values.”