King's College London

Enlargement is the process of new countries joining the European Union. Among the 10 potential candidates for EU membership, six of them (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Serbia) are in the Western Balkans.

Western Balkan countries follow a unique enlargement process called the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP), with the intention to politically and economically stabilise countries to ensure a smooth path to EU membership. The European Commission has recently adopted a new Growth Plan for the Western Balkans with the aim ‘to prepare Western Balkan partners for accession through economic reforms and investment and to bring some of the benefits of EU membership to citizens in the region’.

Dr Andi Hoxhaj, Lecturer in Law and Director of the European Law LLM pathway programme at The Dickson Poon School of Law, was invited as an expert by the European Parliament to give evidence at the meeting alongside the European Commission’s Directorate for Enlargement, and Venice Commission officials.

The subcommittee meeting was called to consider the rule of law in some of the EU candidate states and to provide evidence for the forthcoming annual European Commission Rule of Law Report 2025, due to be published later this year.

The report, for the first time, will not only cover the member states but also four of the Western Balkan candidate countries (Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) that have open accession negotiations for EU membership. This means the enlargement process is now being brought into wider discussions about rule of law in the EU. A draft of the report was presented during the meeting.

During the session, Dr Hoxhaj welcomed the inclusion of candidate countries in the report but also highlighted inconsistencies with its findings in relation to the application of rule of law in the Western Balkans. He also recommended that future EU Rule of Law Reports should include all of the countries that seek EU membership, not only the Western Balkans, and highlighted the need to rigorously examine ‘democratic resilience,’ the function of human rights ombudsman and electoral reform in the candidate countries.

Dr Hoxhaj recently authored an opinion piece on the student-led anti-government protests taking place in Serbia, advocating for the introduction of electoral reform as a new requirement for all EU candidate countries.

Watch the recording of the subcommittee meeting.