Belgrade, Serbia, 12 October 2017

The Berlin process was launched in 2014 to maintain the impetus of European integration in the Western Balkans in order to face one of the key challenges posed to EU’s external policies. In the East, the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea fuelled growing instability at the EU’s doorsteps, while rising influence of non-Western powers continued to spread throughout the Western Balkans. The EU’s approach towards enlargement, undermined by the Juncker Declaration, seemed to have lost its appeal. The Berlin process, against this backdrop, was to further “real additional progress” in the region and thereby reinvigorate the EU’s enlargement strategy. After the last Summit of Trieste, in which the EU reasserted its commitment to support the WB6 on their way into the EU, the Berlin process now heading towards London, in a very challenging political context.

Four years after its launch, what assessment can be done of the Berlin process? Has it given the EU’s enlargement policy a new momentum? How does it intersect with the EU’s enlargement strategy and political agenda? What opportunities and what challenges does it carry in its current form? And what are the implications of the UK hosting the next Berlin Process summit in London in 2018? More generally, also, how does the EU’s enlargement policy relate to the prospects of more differentiated integration? How is it impacted by the internal contestation of key principles in some Member states, as well as by the growing influences of non-Western powers across the EU and beyond, undermining integration processes?

This roundtable is an outreach event of the Western Balkans Reflection Forum initiative. It follows up on the Western Balkans Reflection Forum of Trieste, organised on 26-27 June 2017, and took place in the framework of the Belgrade Security Forum 2018.

Programme