European Union Enlargement Policy Towards the Western Balkans: Solidarity Check

Introduction

This chapter addresses the process of the European Union’s (EU’s) enlargement towards the Western Balkan (WB) states. The main conceptual insight arising from the analysis concerns solidarity. Solidarity moved increasingly into political discourse during the 2015–2016 migration crisis, Brexit and especially during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In his State of the Union address, former President of the European Commission (EC) Juncker (European Commission, 2016) spoke of solidarity being “the glue that keeps our Union together” (p. 16), with current EC President Von der Leyen going even further when stating “Europe has become the world’s beating heart of solidarity” (De la Baume, 2020). Although solidarity is a core value of the EU integration, the Treaties do not shed much light on the concept (Hartwig & Nicolaidis, 2003; Rupnik, 2006). Within the EU Treaty Framework, reference to solidarity is found as either a foreign policy principle (Treaty on the European Union, 2016, Art. 5) and goal (Treaty on the European Union, 2016, Art. 21) or as a “solidarity clause” in the CFSP/CSDP framework, which refers to the EU’s domestic capability for foreign policy action (Treaty on the functioning of the EU, 2012, Art. 222).¹ Some researchers recently turned their attention to solidarity within the EU to assess the effects of the poly-crises (e.g. Bobzien & Kalleitner, 2021; Ciornei & Ross, 2021). Of those, not many have considered solidarity and the EU’s action outside of its borders. Although prominent EU scholars have established there was a “massive solidarity deficit of EU foreign policy with neighbouring areas in case of migration crisis” (Dinan et al., 2017, p. 366), studies that apply the solidarity concept to the EU’s external actions remain rare (e.g. Ferreira-Pereira & Groom, 2010; Šalamon, 2017; Schieder et al., 2011).

This chapter seeks to address the research gap outlined above by adding to the theorisation of solidarity in International Relations (IR) and applying the concept to empirical analysis of the EU–WB relationship. Accordingly, the underlying research question is: In which ways has solidarity been present in the EU–WB relationship since the relationship began in 1999? Following the introduction, the second section defines solidarity as a concept in IR. Two complementary yet at times possibly contradictory definitions are proposed: a) solidarity as part of a “special relationship” (Harnisch, 2018); and b) solidarity as one of three practices of friendship (Berenskoetter & van Hoef, 2018). In the third section, the chapter applies these two conceptualisations of solidarity to the EU–WB relationship. While it focuses on the enlargement policy and considers not simply the view on the EU’s solidarity vis-à-vis WB states, it also offers an insight into the accession process, notably the mutuality of solidarity as understood by WB states. Here, an important aspect is identifying existing empirical challenges with respect to understanding solidarity in the EU–WB relationship. This chapter investigates this especially by observing the foreign policy stances of other than EU great powers active in the region, mainly China, Russia and Turkey. The chapter’s empirical part draws on research methods prevalent in Foreign Policy Analysis as an IR subdiscipline – content analysis and the interpretation of secondary and primary sources. The latter are relevant strategic documents of the EU concerning external action and enlargement policy since 1999, along with official statements by WB states’ political leaders in representative (inter)national media particularly between 2020 and 2021 (the COVID-19 crisis). In conclusion, the chapter critically evaluates the empirical findings and answers the research question as to the nature of and challenges to solidarity in the EU–WB relationship.đ