28 by 28

Andraž Tavčar

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen capped off her tour of the Western Balkans yesterday, having taken in four of the region's six capitals. Sarajevo and Belgrade were left off the itinerary, most likely because Bosnia and Serbia vote on 4 and 25 October respectively and Brussels has no wish to invite accusations of election interference. In Podgorica she stood beside Milojko Spajić, Montenegro's prime minister, and echoed his government's slogan, 28 by 28: the 28th member of the Union by 2028. Rather than play the doom-monger, I believe the EU has set its mind to it, and that we may be spared a repeat of North Macedonia, which changed its own name in 2019 to lift a Greek veto, only to run into a Bulgarian one, and remains stuck until it writes its Bulgarian minority into its constitution.

What will matter most is what comes after 28. Does the count stop there, or do we go on counting, at least until we reach the goal set by Charles Michel, then president of the European Council? He tossed it out at Bled in 2023, rather self-aggrandisingly, to flaunt his cachet at the time, in what may nonetheless have been the best thing to happen to EU enlargement since. He made a promise, and couched it carefully, saying only that "we must be ready - on both sides - to enlarge by 2030", but nobody who read the headlines took it to mean anything other than new members by 2030. Admittedly, most of us doubted the EU would manage all six Western Balkan hopefuls, and the eurocrats in the Berlaymont, frugal as always, have since decided to push for two. The war in Ukraine had made enlargement strategic, and Michel gave it a deadline. If nobody is in by 2030, the policy will have failed in public.

A date to keep. European Union, 2026

Montenegro is furthest along, so Montenegro it is, and it will be ready, at least on paper, much like every candidate before it. Leaving aside the six founders, who set out to build a common market and not a political union, no country was ever ready until a determined few pushed it along. Greece joined in 1981 over the Commission's advice that it needed a waiting period, because the member states, with President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France foremost among them, wanted its young democracy anchored in Europe. Romania and Bulgaria joined in 2007 with their courts and anti-corruption work still under supervision, and Brussels went on issuing report cards on both until 2023. The plans the Commission is due to present on 7 October, under which new members would face safeguards against backsliding after they join, are practice put to theory.

The determined few: the Paris Summit that created the European Council, December 1974. Giscard d'Estaing is second from the left. European Parliament

The same plans have a second half as well, and that one is written for the countries that will not be 28th. The idea is that candidates would be let into EU programmes, and into parts of the single market, well before anyone offers them a seat at the table. Roaming charges are already being negotiated away, and there is a Growth Plan worth 6 billion euros to go with it. What none of this is expected to produce, however, is a common timetable. So the others get the perks and no date, and I think the perks are still worth having.

My idea of Europe is a banal one, and I see it mostly in the ease of access. It is being able to cross a border without noticing that I have done so, or to take a job in another country without first having to hire a lawyer. It is a small thing to build a politics on, I admit, but it is the part of Europe that most of us actually use. I hold, with the faith of a man who never carries an umbrella, that societies change when their people mix, because sooner or later they have to reconcile what they have seen elsewhere with what they put up with at home. And I suspect that money works in much the same way. Some of the region's more entrenched networks of patronage have never really had to compete with European capital, and I doubt they would enjoy it very much. That holds, of course, only where the newcomer has a court and a procurement rule to appeal to when things go wrong. And only fully fledged membership provides those.

The obvious objection is that a frictionless Europe is also an easy one to leave for, and the region has been emptying for years. I happen to think the people who leave are part of how the change comes back. When Moldova voted in 2024 on writing EU membership into its constitution, only 45.4 per cent of those inside the country said yes. Abroad it was 76.8 per cent, and that was enough to carry it.

As for what comes after 28, that comes down to political will, and will, as ever, follows pressure. For now the pressure comes from Michel's date and from the war, and a flag-raising in Podgorica in 2028 would settle the first of them. Albania, the other of the Berlaymont's two, closed its first three negotiating chapters in July, with 30 still to go. As it happens, 29 by 29 is still going spare.

Tete-a-Tete

No easy promises

Laura Plaku trained as a lawyer before becoming executive director of the Albanian Investment Development Agency (AIDA), which has lately been paying closer attention to the companies already investing in the country. She still listens before making a case and prefers facts to flourishes, both habits of her legal training, though at weekends the agenda belongs entirely to her two children.

Also on the site:

One region, two clocks

Slovenia's largest bank mulls the one Western Balkan market it does not have

Freight expectations

Serbia is spending €1.3 billion on its Expo. Someone has to move it all in

The Adriatic

When Expo 2027 opens in Belgrade on 15 May, more than 130 countries will have fitted their pavilions, exhibits and equipment onto 25 hectares in Surčin, on the city's western edge. That is already more than came to Astana in 2017, the last specialised exposition, which drew 115 countries to a site of the same size. The organisers expect at least four million visitors over 93 days and some 8,000 events, all under the theme "Play for Humanity: Sport and Music for All".

A rendering of the Expo 2027 site in Surčin, Belgrade. Sasha Korobov / Werner Sobek

The organisers put the site and the infrastructure around it, which includes an aquatic centre, a river dock, new roads and a rail link from Zemun through the airport, at 1.29 billion euros. In September they named Intereuropa, based in Dobanovci in the same municipality as the site, as the Expo's official logistics partner.

From the handover in December to opening night, dozens of countries will be shipping exhibits onto a site that is still being finished. Intereuropa's job is to make it all arrive on time.

In Brief

The European Commission is preparing to reform the way countries join the European Union. Plans due on 7 October would give candidates earlier access to EU programmes and parts of the single market. New members would face safeguards against democratic backsliding, reportedly including a temporary curb on their vetoes. Edi Rama, Albania's prime minister, said his country was a victim of the veto and would lose nothing if it were scrapped. Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission's president, rounded off a tour of the Western Balkans this week, on which she said Montenegro could be the 28th member by 2028.

Anti-corruption prosecutors are investigating whether Vlora Hyseni, Albania's former intelligence chief, passed state secrets to Ergys Agasi, a businessman, while he was evading arrest. Agasi is suspected of leading a group that rigged tenders at the national agency for digital government services. Prosecutors reportedly identified 70 phone conversations between the two and seized nine documents thought to come from the intelligence service. Hyseni, who has been dismissed, denies the allegations. The government says the investigation shows that the justice system works, while protesters who have spent four months outside its headquarters demanding its resignation see it as proof that the state is compromised.

Montenegro's government said last week that six American firms had expressed interest in the Adriatic-Ionian Corridor, a planned motorway, gas pipeline, and digital link. The call, aimed at American companies, stems from a cooperation agreement signed in Washington in July. America wants its liquefied natural gas to replace Russian gas in Europe, which the European Union will ban from next year. In April AAFS Infrastructure and Energy, an American firm run by a former lawyer to Donald Trump, was named lead investor in a pipeline worth up to 1.5 billion dollars linking Bosnia, which buys all its gas from Russia, to an import terminal in Croatia. Montenegro's pipeline could be fed from the same terminal.