Paving the way to EU accession for the Western Balkans

Background

The EESC has been asked by the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union to issue an exploratory opinion on the road ahead to the EU accession for the Western Balkans.

In this opinion, the EESC underlines the benefits of the future EU enlargement to the region and the EU itself from a holistic point of view. It calls for a gradual, credible and merit-based accession process, which would strengthen the EU and the region both politically and socio-economically.

Key points

In the opinion, the EESC:

• as the first EU body to have involved representatives from candidate countries in its daily work, calls upon the other EU institutions to make the best use of the new accession methodology by involving representatives of the candidate and potential candidate countries in their work;
• asks the input from the social partners and civil society organisations to be sought in a timely manner for the implementation of the Reform and Growth Facility Plan for the Western Balkans;
• emphasises the need to address the social dimension of the green transition to an inclusive and just economy and society and calls for EU programmes and regional structures to be bolstered, with the aim of reaching more young people in the Western Balkan;
• stresses the importance of systematic, meaningful and timely inclusion of the social partners and civil society organisations in the EU accession negotiations, pointing out to the important role of civil society joint consultative committees (JCCs);
• urges the Commission to address evident attempts to suppress the civic space, and to reflect these issues more prominently in the enlargement strategy and country reports;
• acknowledges that, for the enlargement to be successful, in parallel to preparing the candidates for accession, the EU needs to reform and be ready to include more members.

Additional information

EESC section: External Relations (REX)

Opinion number: REX/591-EESC-2024

Opinion type: Exploratory opinion Presidency

Rapporteur: Andrej ZORKO (Workers-GRII/ Slovenia)

Co-rapporteur:  Ionuţ SIBIAN (Civil Society Organisations -GR III/ Romania)

Date of adoption by section: 17/07/2024

Date of adoption in plenary: 18-19 September 2024

Result of the vote in plenary:

Contact

Millie Tsoumani

Press Officer, Tel.: +32 (0) 2 546 9088, Email: Amalia.tsoumani@eesc.europa.eu 

David Hoić

Administrator, Policy Officer, Tel.: +32 (0) 2 546 9069, Email: David.Hoic@eesc.europa.eu