A Bold Step — But the Western Balkans Must Move as One

WB30 welcomes the Vučić–Rama late February Op-Ed as a sign that the region's leaders are finally speaking with one voice — but urges the EU to think bigger: collective, full accession for all six Western Balkan states, now.

Photo: Tanjug/Jadranka Ilic

The joint op-ed published late last month in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is a landmark moment for Western Balkan diplomacy. For the first time, leaders from two countries with a complicated shared history have stepped forward in unison to urge the European Union accelerate the accession process and to offer a pragmatic formula for doing so.

What Vučić and Rama Got Right

The Rama–Vučić proposal rests on sound logic. The two leaders argue that continued stagnation (Croatia was the last country to join the EU, thirteen years ago) is not a neutral condition. It actively erodes trust, deepens instability, and cedes influence in the Western Balkans to actors hostile to European values. They are right. The cost of non-enlargement is not zero; it is paid in democratic backsliding, economic stagnation, and the creeping influence of Russia and China in a region geographically surrounded by the EU.

They are also right that concerns in Paris, Berlin, and other capitals about the EU's decision making capacity are legitimate and cannot simply be wished away. Their proposal: accelerated integration into the Single Market and Schengen, without veto rights, additional commissioners, or new MEPs as an intermediate step, is a genuine attempt to thread that needle. It deserves serious engagement.

Where We Must Go Further

Yet WB30 believes the initiative doesn't go quite far enough. All of the WB6 needs brought into this framework, without doing so, it could entrench a two-tier Europe in which Serbia and Albania win preferential access while their neighbors, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia are left further behind. History shows that a fragmented Western Balkans is a vulnerable Western Balkans. The region's instability has never been a problem that can be solved country by country.

WB30's manifesto is built on a single, evidence-based conviction: admitting all six Western Balkan states contemporaneously is both strategically superior and politically achievable. It removes the perverse incentives that lead candidate countries to compete rather than cooperate. It eliminates the grey zones that hostile foreign powers exploit. And it delivers the EU a coherent, stable neighborhood rather than a patchwork of partial relationships.

WB30 supports ambitious interim steps as a bridge, not a destination. The destination must remain full, equal membership, on a defined timeline, for the entire region.

"Excluding any of the Western Balkan states from the EU will ensure that the Western Balkans remain a factor for instability in the heart of Europe that can be exploited by Europe's enemies."  — WB30 Manifesto

A Call to European Leadership

WB30 calls on the European Council to treat the Vučić–Rama initiative not as the ceiling of ambition but as the floor. The political will demonstrated in Belgrade and Tirana this week must be met with equal political courage in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. European leaders have a choice: they can manage the Western Balkans at arm's length for another decade, watching instability compound and Russia's influence deepen, or they can make the strategic decision to complete Europe.

The 2030 deadline is not a slogan. It is a strategic imperative. Every year of delay is a year in which the Western Balkans drift further from European norms and a year in which Europe's adversaries gain ground. The question is not whether the EU can afford to enlarge. The question is whether Europe can afford not to.

WB30 urges the European Commission and the European Council to build on the momentum of the Vučić–Rama op-ed by convening an emergency enlargement summit that places all six Western Balkan candidate states on an equal footing and commits to a binding accession roadmap with a 2030 horizon. The time for process is over. The time for decision is now.