Eyes wide shut: How to read China’s playbook in the Western Balkans | ECFR
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The global order no longer favours Western dominance, and Europe's peripheries have become battlegrounds for competing powers. Yet, the EU’s enlargement policy

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/41718801

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  • The EU lacks a clear “China conditionality” in its enlargement policy with Western Balkan countries—that is, defining and implementing conditions for candidates to engage with China—and the topic of China remains largely absent from accession talks.
  • The EU’s own hesitant China policy is in part to blame. The union’s official stance of balancing cooperation and rivalry no longer reflects EU actions in practice, which lean towards confrontation.
  • As membership talks stall, China’s influence in the Western Balkans grows, raising fears that new member states could act as promoters of Chinese interests and veto actions against Beijing in the EU.
  • The EU must clarify its China policy and embed it as a clear conditionality in the accession process.

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In 2021, one instance of China’s involvement in the Western Balkans set off the EU’s alarm bells: Montenegro was heading towards financial collapse after a huge loan from China’s Exim Bank for a controversial highway project swelled into a debt mountain—at one point topping a third of the country’s annual budget. The EU sprang into action. It rapidly mapped developments on the ground, strengthened its China teams and eventually stepped in to prevent Montenegro from falling into debt bondage with China.

The episode was a wake-up call for the EU on Beijing’s expanding footprint in the bloc’s periphery. Yet, four years later, the EU still does not have a clear “China conditionality” for EU aspirant countries, and the topic of China remains noticeably absent from formal accession talks. The void is made larger by the EU’s own hesitant and ambiguous China policy.

More than two decades since the EU granted a perspective for membership to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, accession seems to have drifted ever farther from sight. What was once a time-bound political and institutional effort with a clear goal has shifted into an open-ended, multi-generational journey buffeted by geopolitical headwinds and mounting frustration.

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