According to recent reports, the European Union cannot give accession guarantees to Western Balkans countries. Analyst Andi Bushati says it is not necessarily the bloc’s fault, as these countries failed to “establish democratic systems”.
Andi Bushati said that Europe has already suffered from accepting countries like Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary into the bloc, and does not want any other “illiberal democracies” like the ones seen in the Balkans or Eastern Europe amid fears of their veto power.
“At first hand, it seems that we’re in front of a xenophobic Europe which falls prey to its own nationalistic circles”, said Bushati. “In essence, the problem is with former Eastern communist countries, which were unable to produce democratic systems”.
“Albania is the par excellence example of that”, he added, arguing that the country went from “Berisha authoritarianism” to “Rama’s combination of democracy and dictatorship”, without ever producing a real democratic system.
While according to analyst Baton Haxhiu, this means that the EU no longer favors the integration of the Western Balkans, adding that it resembled the bloc’s stance on Turkey.
“I think that there is European xenophobia against Balkan states, it is not related to corruption or bad governance. These are the reasons that bring a xenophobic discourse against the people of the Balkans”, said Haxhiu.
But, apart from the government systems, Haxhiu also weighed in on the importance of religion in Europe.
He said that many countries were ahead of Bulgaria or Romania, although they didn’t receive similar treatment from Brussels.
“Either you need to have equal standards on integration, or you deny membership upfront. This form of rhetoric resembles more to EU’s relations with Turkey, which it had promised integration, but then again, here we are”, concluded Haxhiu.
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