Paris says the EU faces too many challenges to let in two more states from the Balkans, a region still scarred by wars fought in the 1990s and struggling with crime and corruption. While the Netherlands supports French wariness of membership talks for Albania, which is already a member of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, many other countries, led by Italy, are deeply frustrated by the French position. The impasse sets up a showdown between Macron and the rest of the bloc at a two-day summit in Brussels from Thursday if Europe ministers cannot agree to open talks in Luxembourg.
"Is the process efficient? From our point of view, no."
"The first thing we need to talk about is how Europe must reform the way it does enlargement and negotiations," de Montchalin said, calling the process "an endless soap opera". The six Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, all of which apart from Albania emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia, are considered future European Union members. That French position has raised concerns in Brussels about further delays in an already drawn-out process that will deepen the Balkans' growing ties with Russia and China. But Amelie de Montchalin, France's European affairs minister, said there could be no way forward until what French President Emmanuel Macron in July called "deep reform" of EU membership rules.
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