Open Balkan, a failed step in the right direction

Conceived as an alternative to EU cooperation, the Open Balkan initiative, promoted by Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia, aimed to create a regional common market to allow the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. The reasons for its failure

The Open Balkan initiative, initially known as "Mini-Schengen", emerged as a regional cooperation project between three Balkan countries: Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia. As the European enlargement came to a halt, the leaders of the Western Balkans countries found themselves unable to keep the promises of a European future made to citizens. The European prospects of the Western Balkans, while not entirely lost, appeared decidedly diminished by the statements of the highest EU officials that the EU needed to reform itself before welcoming new members.

In response to the enlargement moratorium , announced in 2014 by Jean-Claude Juncker, the Western Balkans were offered a consolation prize: the so-called Berlin Process, a regional cooperation initiative spearheaded by Germany. The initiative represented yet another "project transfer” – a regional cooperation idea conceived within the EU and then entrusted to the Western Balkans to implement and develop it further.

Open Balkan was intended to be the exact opposite: a domestic project, developed by Western Balkan leaders eager to show themselves capable of fostering cooperation within the region.

The initiative was launched in October 2019 with a declaration signed in Novi Sad by the leaders of the countries involved, followed by two other joint declarations, signed in Tirana and Ohrid. The idea was to create a common market, similar to that of the EU, to allow the free movement of goods, services, capital and people (the so-called four freedoms).

Each of the countries involved perceived the possible benefits of the initiative in its own way. For Albania, the opening of the border with Kosovo would allow Albanians on both sides to enjoy the four freedoms without any constraints. For Serbia, the initiative would lead to a détente in what could be seen as an informal normalization of Belgrade-Pristina relations. Finally, for North Macedonia the initiative would represent an opportunity to regain political momentum at the regional level, after the Prespa Agreement - and the subsequent change of the name of the country - had left a sour taste in the mouths of the population and local political elites.

Despite the initial enthusiasm, today the Open Balkan project seems to have reached a dead end. Reasons for that are manifold. The failure is partly linked to the very structure of the project, promoted mainly by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, i.e. by two leaders willing to support regional initiatives only if they can benefit from them on the internal political level.

Second, the initiative has never involved other countries such as Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, all of which showed distrust and supported the Berlin Process as the preferred alternative. Third, geopolitical changes, provoked by Russian aggression in Ukraine, pushed the EU to make a U-turn in its enlargement policy.

In March 2024, the EU decided to open accession negotiations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. A few months earlier, Moldova and Ukraine also received the green light to start negotiations. The revival of enlargement has put negative pressure on alternative initiatives like Open Balkan.

At the same time, the renewed political presence of the EU in the Western Balkans has revived the question of the fate of regional cooperation. The process of European integration cannot proceed without cooperation and the search for solutions to some issues that post-conflict societies, such as the former Yugoslav ones, inevitably face.

A revised Berlin Process that includes EU membership as a definite goal could be a good place to start over. By setting a clear target, the Berlin Process could transform from yet another paternalistic initiative conceived from the outside
into a project enthusiastically embraced by countries in the region.

A positive signal in this direction is the fact that in 2023 the annual summit of the Berlin Process took place in Tirana, unlike previous years in which EU cities hosted the summit. Although mostly symbolical, this change follows one of the few ideas successfully promoted by Open Balkan - that of encouraging meetings within the region to demonstrate the coherence of a project capable of involving local actors.

Full alignment of the Western Balkans with the Common Foreign and Security Policy should be a prerequisite for the region's progress towards the EU, thus preventing Russia from exploiting the fault lines within the region. This alignment is necessary in the current phase of reorganization of the global order in which the EU cannot afford another leader like Orbán.

The current geopolitical juncture has proven to be crucial for the renewed presence of the EU in the Western Balkans, but also for the end of the Open Balkan project. Despite failing to achieve most of its objectives, Open Balkan partly managed to fill the political-stategic vacuum created as a consequence of the enlargement fatigue.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said that the Open Balkan initiative had achieved its goal, thus sending a clear message that Albania is refocusing. The future of regional cooperation in the Western Balkans rests on a clear project of European integration, spearheaded by Brussels and free of theatrics and political games such as those played by Balkan leaders during the Open Balkan experiment.