Expert: EU Enlargement Has Added Up to Nothing, Gap Will Widen in Coming Years

Dusan Reljic (Beta/Milos Miskov)

International policy expert Dusan Reljic has said in Belgrade that the EU's enlargement to the Western Balkans has added up to nothing and that the economic gap between the Union member states and the countries of the region will widen in the coming years.

Speaking at a two-day conference titled "(Mis)perceptions of the European Union in the Western Balkans," Reljic, the director of the Brussels office of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), said that the point of the EU should be convergence, i.e. bringing countries closer to one another in a political, economic and legal sense.

However, a political economy produces divergence, i.e. additionally distances the Western Balkan countries from EU member states, he said. "Every citizen of the Western Balkans will receive 500 euros from the EU in the next seven years, whereas every citizen of Croatia and Greece, for example, will receive between 5,300 and 5,700 euros. The possibility of the region getting closer to the Union is limited because the gap between the EU member states and the Western Balkans will grow year in, year out, instead of shrinking," said Reljic.

Reljic added that debates on EU enlargement strategies were "a waste of time." "The 10-year average of the Western Balkans' trade deficit with the EU has totaled around 110 billion euros in the last 10-15 years, meaning that a huge amount of money is going from the region to the wealthy EU countries," said Reljic.

He pointed out that a consequence of the EU's attitude toward the region was that many people felt let down because they had become neither richer nor healthier, as time went by, adding that this created fertile ground for nationalism and populism.