For what we at the Democratization Policy Council, DPC, call Europe+ – the remaining democratic world in the North Atlantic region and beyond – the implications ought to be abundantly clear. So long as Trump and those who have come to power and influence under him hold sway in the United States, it is an enemy of Europe (particularly the EU) – opposed to Europe’s (largely) democratic character and its internal and external security. Trump’s US, as with Europe’s own crop of reactionary political forces, despises a rules- and rights-based democratic system. For the US, these are seen as impediments to its power.
While the resources, will and creative strategic thinking required by the moment to deal with the totality of the challenge the EU and Europe+ faces are massive, there is one front on which it can act decisively in the near term in its own interests and those of the people of the region: the Western Balkans.
There is no other theater in which the EU in particular, backed by its remaining democratic allies, can exert as much leverage in favor of its interests and its values. But first it needs to recognize and build its posture around its real competitive advantage in relation to Trump’s America, Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, and the autocratic Gulf States: its declared values.
The EU’s agreement late December 18 to undertake joint debt to support Ukraine was necessary and appropriate – and reflected a defense of democratic values. And while these values have been – appropriately! – deployed and incorporated into policy with regard to the new membership candidates of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, they have been very thin in the European bloc’s actual politics and talking points toward the Western Balkans. This is hardly a new problem.
Instead, the EU (and other members of Europe+) practice their own self-seeking amoralism or values agnosticism in their policies toward Western Balkan governments and leaders. Nowhere has this been more evident that in the case of Serbia.
It has been particularly clear during more than a year of protests against Aleksandar Vucic and his regime by students and a growing spectrum of Serbia’s populace since the Novi Sad railway station disaster on November 1, 2024. While the European Parliament has been increasingly forthright in its condemnation of Vucic and co., the European Commission and most member states have taken a long time to even summon any real critiques.
This appears to be intended to maintain the benefits over which Vucic is gatekeeper: the deal to mine lithium in Serbia’s Jadar Valley and Belgrade’s role in “making weapons available to Ukraine” (as the director general in the Enlargement Directorate, Gert Jan Koopman, memorably put it to the DPC’s Toby Vogel in late November 2024). Despite regular allegations by Vucic and his officials that the EU seeks to destabilize Serbia, there have been no serious consequences for them over the protests, although some member states have suspended bilateral cooperation with the Serbian government following the Commission’s 2025 country report, which strongly criticized Belgrade’s democratic backsliding.
The EU seems bent on not revisiting its basic presumptions of two decades ago – a different geopolitical epoch – in facing the Western Balkans. Although it has dropped the term “transformation” from its regular talking point rota, it continues to seem to believe that the process of enlargement is its principal – if not only – policy lever in the region.
Furthermore, Brussels’ wholly justified desire to prevent the region from becoming a locus of further adversarial encroachment or source of destabilization has led it to see enlargement – the sooner the better – as a defensive geopolitical tool. Hence the evident desire for positive examples in Montenegro and Albania, despite evident issues of deep concern in both countries that the EU ought to be wary of importing: Serbian and Russian interference – with the admixture of institutional corruption in the former and the concentration of power and corruption in the latter.
The EU’s enlargement policy is effectively combined with a far wider policy toolbox when addressing Ukraine in particular, but also Moldova, particularly when it comes to the security realm. Yet, in the Western Balkans, where the Union holds security mandates and has had deep engagement for more than a quarter-century, it shows no such creativity or dexterity.
A wider EU/Europe+ policy recalibration on the Western Balkans should be launched in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as I have previously argued. What this would entail is not a retreat from enlargement but rather a long overdue recognition of who the true constituency and partners for the EU’s declared values are: the long-suffering citizens of the Western Balkans Six countries, who desperately want what the EU says it is for. At the moment, these people rightfully feel abandoned, even betrayed – worse yet, in favor of “partners” like Vucic who rarely miss the opportunity to demonstrate contempt for the EU.
While there are signs that a wider recognition is growing that the EU must reckon with enemies east and west, it must also seriously confront illiberal actors within the Union itself for its own security, as well as to uphold its foundational values.
The Western Balkan policy recalibration can constitute a first step in this direction. Short of this recalibration, the EU runs the risk of diminishing returns for a more of the same policy, albeit with more money (which is effectively what the Growth Plan constitutes), or adopting more overt or putative ideological or transactive partners for Orban and Trump’s Europe. That is, Putin’s Europe. The actual policy, on the current trajectory, might end up being an unappetizing mélange of the two.
The EU, with the assistance of its wider network of democratic allies, has all the tools and leverage it needs to secure its flank in the Western Balkans – not only preventing bad things from happening, but enabling positive dynamics to get traction in each of these societies, thereby facilitating enlargement. What it has lacked to date is the vision, requisite strategy, and will to pursue it, deviating from its tired old script.
The EU’s very source code was born of an elitism confident in security and democracy. Now the democratic base must broaden for its security. In the Western Balkans, this means that it needs to reshape its policies for its own benefit and those of the people of the region. The only avenue that seems viable is a coalition of member state leaders who recognize the dangers of protracted failure and are willing to press the issue in the European Council for a fundamental recalibration.
Kurt Bassuener is co-founder and Senior Associate of the Democratization Policy Council, DPC, through which he has published numerous policy briefs.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.