Overview
- German chancellor Friedrich Merz and French president Emmanuel Macron led a joint initiative at the EU–Westbalkan summit in Tivat on Friday to speed up enlargement by replacing an all‑or‑nothing route with a performance‑based, stepwise integration model.
- The proposal would give candidate states early practical access such as observer roles in EU bodies and participation in SEPA, Erasmus+ and reduced mobile roaming, with further partial market access tied to reform milestones.
- Merkel and Macron framed the plan as a geopolitical tool to keep the Western Balkans in Europe’s orbit and slow growing Russian and Chinese influence, while insisting that formal accession criteria will not be relaxed.
- The package won broad political backing at the summit but remains at the implementation stage and needs technical design and formal approvals from the European Commission, the European Parliament and member states before measures take effect.
- Reactions varied across coverage from hopeful Balkan leaders pointing to faster pathways for Montenegro to critics who warned the approach risks economic dependency without granting full institutional voice to candidate countries.