The view that the EU enlargement process has stalled and is no longer credible is not new.

The latest analysis by the Berlin-based think tank "European Stability Initiative" shows how sad the situation is, which has one strength above all:

Michael Martens

Correspondent for Southeast European countries based in Vienna.

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It unmasks the enlargement policy, which has frozen into ineffectiveness and rhetoric, not on the basis of statements and views of third parties, but rather on the basis of data and assessments from the EU Commission itself.

It is obvious that the accession negotiations have taken longer and longer over the years and have now ended up in a kind of endless loop.

Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia had talks with the Commission for 34 months and Estonia, Poland and Slovenia for 56 months before becoming a member in 2004.

Bulgaria and Romania negotiated for 58 months before joining the EU in 2007 (too soon, especially since the judicial systems of both countries were anything but ready for accession).

The previous record is held by Croatia, which negotiated for 68 months.

Accession negotiations are taking longer and longer

And yet, in retrospect, Croatia's accession process seems like a lightning bolt.

Croatia applied in 2003, was accepted as a candidate in 2004, negotiated from 2005 to 2011 and joined the EU in 2013 as its youngest member to date.

A decade passed from application to acceptance.

A long but manageable period.

Today's accession candidates can only dream of that.

Serbia has been in accession talks for 101 months and has only closed two negotiation chapters.

Montenegro has been negotiating for 120 months and has provisionally closed three chapters.

Extrapolated to up to 35 negotiation chapters, this results in an accession process that is longer than a human lifetime.

On the other hand, it can be argued that the EU alone is not responsible for the duration of the talks.

If the candidates fail to make progress on reforms, the accession process will of course stall.

Look at Turkey, whose talks, while not officially ended, have been frozen.

Formally, it has been more than 200 months since Turkey began talks.

A chapter was closed.

Since then, with thousands of political prisoners and no separation of powers, the country has strayed so far from EU standards that its candidate status seems like a farce.

However, the reverse conclusion – whoever reforms will be rewarded with progress and ultimately with EU accession – no longer works.

The reality of political reforms in the candidate countries and the EU accession process are decoupled from each other.

Albania, for example, has been a candidate since 2014, but has not yet been allowed to start accession negotiations.

Nevertheless, according to the EU's progress reports, it is further ahead than Serbia, which has been negotiating accession for years, on issues such as the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

North Macedonia has not started accession negotiations but, according to the Commission, is as good as or better than Montenegro, which has been negotiating for a decade, in 23 out of 33 chapters.

Montenegro and Serbia opened the central negotiation chapters on the judiciary and fundamental rights many years ago.

But North Macedonia and Albania, which have not even started negotiations, are as far along as Montenegro and better than Serbia in meeting the relevant criteria.

Accession talks do not make reforms more likely

"This raises a fundamental question: What has eight years of accession talks achieved with Serbia and ten with Montenegro when a country that has never started negotiations is just as prepared for accession as they are?" the analysis reads under the title "The Balkan Turtle Race".

There is no link between a country's formal status and its level of reform, the report said.

The opening of accession talks has not made reforms in the respective states more likely than in those that are not conducting EU negotiations.

Rather, the opening of individual negotiation chapters has degenerated into a meaningless ritual: “Nothing really changes in the negotiations after a chapter has been opened.

There is no more money.

There is no more attention.

There are no additional activities.

Opening chapters is not a reward.

Opening chapters is not an incentive or signal to others.

Opening chapters doesn't make future progress more likely."

The fact that the EU no longer even makes conditional accession commitments also contributes to this.

At its summit in Gothenburg in 2001, the EU promised Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia and other states that accession by 2004 would be possible, provided their reform progress continued at the same pace.

What speaks against naming a target date with such preconditions today?

If not for full membership, which the EU will not be able to offer in the foreseeable future due to its internal constitution, then at least for important milestones such as joining the common European market?

"The EU needs to send a signal to the whole region: that any country that meets the necessary standards will definitely gain something worthwhile, even if the EU has failed to reform enough to welcome many new members," says the analysis.

Abolition of the EU's unanimity principle for foreign policy decisions is not in sight, which makes new memberships unlikely.

Whatever the answer in the end is: The current enlargement process and its methodology are ineffective - and it is the EU Commission itself which impressively proves this with its assessments of the individual candidate countries.