by Genc Pollo
Let’s start with the dog.
“As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly,” says the Old Testament (Proverbs 26:11), offering a blunt metaphor for stupidity and the stubborn repetition of mistakes. That proverbial dog may be the right analogy for Prime Minister Edi Rama who, on Saturday, together with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, declared in an article in Germany’s leading daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he is ready to accept “membership” in the European Union without the political attributes of a full member state. To be fair, I doubt we are dealing here with the “fool” of Scripture. This is something else: political calculation.
Rama declared an end to his preferential relationship with Serbia and his personal rapport with Vučić in the summer of 2023, when Belgrade refused to release three Kosovo border police officers kidnapped by Serbian gendarmerie. He did so by once again announcing the end of the Mini Schengen/Open Balkans project, which by then had been discredited as divisive, anti European and ineffective.
That preferential axis carried multiple dangerous implications for regional stability and Kosovo’s integrity. It flirted with destabilizing ideas such as territorial swaps. It harmed Kosovo diplomatically by reinforcing the image of Prishtina’s isolation from a new Tirana Belgrade axis. It proved politically toxic in the pressure Rama placed on Kosovo to accept Miroslav Lajčák’s unfavorable schemes. One bizarre episode from that period still stands out: at a European/Western Balkans summit in Brussels in June 2022, Rama was the only leader to argue passionately against any measures targeting Serbia, the one country refusing to impose EU sanctions on Russia.
In the three years since, Serbia has continued to reject the EU sanctions. It has shown no genuine inclination to normalize relations with Prishtina. Alongside its international campaign to delegitimize the Kosovar state, Serbia has repeatedly threatened Kosovo with military aggression, deployed troops on the border, and provided support and shelter to the perpetrators of the 2023 terrorist attack in northern Kosovo. In short, Vučić’s Serbia was, and remains, a destabilizing factor for the entire region.
Against this backdrop, anyone can reasonably ask: why is Rama returning to Vučić yet again as a partner, jointly addressing Berlin and Brussels?
Part of the answer lies in the similarities between the two leaders and their political systems, similarities that distinguish them from the other four Western Balkan states. Rama and Vučić have, for more than a decade, presided over authoritarian kleptocratic regimes characterized by concentrated, personalized power, where the rule of law and democratic standards have deteriorated to their lowest point since the Ramiz Alia and Slobodan Milošević era.
Both countries have also repeatedly been branded by Brussels as front runners in the enlargement process. But that front runner label has never been stable. Seven years ago, the front runners were Serbia and Montenegro. Two years ago, they were Albania and Montenegro. By 2026, only Montenegro is officially treated by Brussels as the sole front runner. The designation is political, not merely technical, and it shifts with the winds in Brussels and the realities on the ground.
Now, to our chances.
If you ask officials at the European Commission or diplomats from EU member states about the prospects of Western Balkan accession, you will hear the same answer you heard ten years ago: full membership is possible for you if you truly meet the standards. But if one listen to the real decision makers in the member states, you learn a more sobering lesson. Croatia, in 2013, may have been the last country to enter with full rights. The rest will either wait indefinitely or be offered something less.
The reasons inside the EU are structural. Decision making is already complicated with 27 member states. With Western Balkan enlargement, it could become 33. Vetoes, often paralyzing and sometimes merely obstructive, would likely become more frequent. The “solution” some are floating is not deeper reform inside the Union, but a dilution of what membership means for newcomers. In that model, Rama and Vučić become oddly accommodating. They are ready to give up even traditional symbols of equality such as national representation through one commissioner and full parliamentary representation, in exchange for a label that can be sold at home as membership.
The reasons linked to the region are equally clear. The failure to meet fundamental standards of legality, democracy, freedoms and human rights remains widespread, along with uneven performance on the technical requirements of the market economy. The irony of Saturday’s article is that the two states struggling most with these basic standards are proposing a truncated membership formula that would inevitably affect the entire Western Balkans, including countries where elections are regular, governments have changed through the ballot box over the last decade, and political alternation has reflected the voters’ will.
There is also another trick that primarily benefits Vučić. A membership minus formula could allow Serbia to bypass the chapters of accession negotiations that have become politically costly, especially those where the normalization of relations with Kosovo is embedded, including Chapter 35. It would be a way to change the game rather than play it, escaping obligations that Serbia has resisted for years. In the same breath, such a shift could undermine Montenegro’s chances for genuine accession, helped along by pro Serbian parties in Podgorica that have every incentive to slow Montenegro’s progress and keep it trapped in regional ambiguity.
What Rama and Vučić are effectively advocating is entry into the EU’s Common Market, enjoying the four freedoms of movement of people, goods, services and capital without the full political attributes of membership. In theory, participation in the Common Market presupposes the rule of law. Yet Rama and Vučić may be betting that in their case the EU will close one eye, lowering the bar in practice even if it remains high in official rhetoric.
So what is the best help the EU can offer the Western Balkans, whether the end point is full membership, membership minus, or phased integration?
It is not clever new labels. It is not shortcuts designed to manage enlargement fatigue in Brussels while producing slogans for domestic consumption in the region. The best help is serious conditionality focused on the fundamentals: the rule of law, democratic standards, and the protection of freedoms and human rights.
Without these, any integration becomes an empty vessel: a market without safeguards, a political community without democratic commitments, a European promise reduced to bureaucratic compromise. And without them, we will keep returning, like the proverbial dog, to the same mistakes dressed up as new initiatives.
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