Policy Brief: How to support democratisation in the Western Balkans?

14/11/2023

The Policy Brief claims that the EU pre-accession process in the Western Balkans needs stronger political support for democratisation by the European Union (EU) and its member states. Only progress on the democratisation path can lead to a successful and sustainable transformation of the EU candidate countries. Once EU accession negotiations are opened, the EU should keep its monitoring and steering of the process at a high level, since as long as the accession perspective is not underlined with a realistic accession date, the processes are becoming a bureaucratic window dressing exercise.