EU turns down membership talks with Balkan states

THE EU has made a “historic mistake” that risks destabilising the Balkans, senior officials warned yesterday, after a handful of countries led by French President Emmanuel Macron again blocked membership talks for North Macedonia and Albania.

There was widespread frustration and disappointment, particularly among Eastern European countries keen to broaden the EU club, at the failure to agree to start formal accession negotiations with Skopje and Tirana.

Leaders were deadlocked after some seven hours of heated backroom wrangling at a Brussels summit, with France alone in rejecting North Macedonia and joined by Denmark and the Netherlands in refusing Albania.

“It’s a major historic mistake and I hope it will only be temporary and won’t become engraved in the collective memory as a historic mistake,” European Commission chief Jeanclaude Juncker said.

On the eve of the summit, Zoran Zaev, North Macedonia’s prime minister, warned China and Russia would “fill in the vacuum” left by the Europeans and urged EU leaders not to “fade out the bright stars” of the EU flag.

North Macedonia is seen as having met EU targets for a host of reforms, while Albania has less support, with reservations about corruption and organised crime. Nikola Dimitrov, North Macedonia’s foreign minister, warned the EU to come clean about its true intentions. “If there is no more consensus on the European future of the Western Balkans... the citizens deserve to know,” he tweeted.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said EU leaders would look again at the matter before a summit with Western Balkans leaders in Zagreb next year.