[Every Western Balkan nation plus Moldova except for Bosnia and Herzegovina is a democracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index?wprov=sfti1) and most of them seem eager to march to Brussels’ beat. I also think many residents of those countries see Austria as the ideal model for running a country given the historical connections to Austria and the fact that many people from the Balkans live and work both in Austria, Germany, and the rest of the EU.
Likewise, many of their residents also seem eager to live and work in Austria and the rest of the EU for higher wages, better social safety nets and less corruption.
Given their democratic status, and their seemingly increasing loyalty to Brussels, how do citizens of the European Union’s flagship feel about extending the golden stars to the Western Balkans and Moldova?
6 comments
Sounds fine to me. If we continue that route we can finally rename the EU to Austria-Hungary.
I feel positive about them joining the EU but I don’t feel positive about joining countries at the current state of the EU. A single country can block the whole EU (eg Hungary concerning sanctions against Russia).
There is still a lot of nationalism in Europe and in my opinion this nationalism interferes with the EU. I’d prefer that the European Parliament got more power prior to giving even more countries access to the EU including veto rights.
It definitely should be our goal to get them into the EU at some point, once they meet the necessary criteria. Realistically this probably could be the case in the next 10-20 years. Ideally even in less than 10 years, imo.
In the case of Serbia and Bosnia it doesn’t look very promising atm, though. Some major political would need to happen for them to join EU in the next decades. Currently it’s basically out of the question for those two.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/v3tq7n/nederlanders_how_do_you_feel_about_the_potential/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/v3tq7n/nederlanders_how_do_you_feel_about_the_potential/)
“I also think many residents of those countries see NL as the ideal model for running a country (probably less so than Germany and Austria though due to historical influences).”
[https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/v3tq2g/germans_how_do_you_feel_about_the_potential/](https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/v3tq2g/germans_how_do_you_feel_about_the_potential/)
“I also think many residents of those countries see Germany as the ideal model for running a country given the historical connections to Germany and the fact that many people from the Balkans live and work both in Germany and Austria”
You are kind of an opportunistic cnt, aren’t you? Just how many ideal models do they have?
Now is not a good time I’m afraid, most of these countries are way too russophilic to to be allowed in while one country can effectively block EU policy. We already have enough on our plate with Hungary, we can’t afford to quadruple these issues. As soon as this internal problem is sufficiently dealt with there’s really no reason to deny these countries anymore though.
In the short term positive.
However mid to long term i think it would be embarassing if they start fighting corruption better than we do…