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2026-10-29 17:09:54Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

The European Union has placed the rule of law and democratic reforms at the center of the enlargement process.

But as the requirements for candidate countries have become stricter, one of the historical membership criteria has lost weight in the negotiation methodology: the protection of national minorities.

This is the warning of an analysis prepared for the European Parliament's Petitions Committee by researcher Gwendolyn Sasse, which highlights a discrepancy between the way the EU formulates enlargement standards and the role that minority issues continue to play in political decisions on membership.

The study argues that the Fundamentals First approach, which aims to prioritize fundamental reforms, has reduced the visibility of minority protection as a separate condition for membership.

In the 1993 Copenhagen criteria, respect for and protection of minorities were explicitly mentioned alongside democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.

But in the reformulation of enlargement priorities in 2013 and in the new 2020 methodology, this requirement has been subsumed within the broader categories of fundamental rights and non-discrimination.

According to the author, the difference is not simply linguistic. The lack of a separate treatment could weaken monitoring and create uncertainty about the standards that candidate countries must meet.

The Balkans, where the void becomes political

The importance of this problem is particularly evident in the Western Balkans, where interethnic disputes and minority issues have for decades affected relations between states and their European perspective.

The analysis cites the Greek veto against Albania, the Bulgarian veto against North Macedonia, and the agreements between Serbia and Kosovo as examples of the weight that these issues have in enlargement policy.

The paradox, according to the study, lies in the fact that the EU continues to treat minority issues as important elements for regional stability and security, while the negotiation methodology does not give them the same visibility as a separate criterion.

The problem is compounded by the lack of fully harmonized standards within the European Union itself. Member states have different approaches to minority recognition, linguistic rights, autonomy, and political representation.

This creates difficulties for a membership process that aims to be based on objective and equally applicable criteria.

The European Parliament demands more weight

The study highlights a gap between the European Commission and the European Parliament. In its March 2026 resolution on the enlargement strategy, the Parliament explicitly reaffirmed the importance of minority rights, calling for effective representation, protection of cultural and linguistic identity, education in minority languages ​​and the fight against hate crimes.

The author proposes that the European Parliament make more vigorous use of reports, hearings, and monitoring mechanisms to bring this criterion back to the center of the process.

An important instrument is also the power of Parliament to grant or refuse approval of accession treaties.

The analysis also suggests more systematic inclusion of minority rights in reports on candidate countries and strengthening cooperation with the Council of Europe and the OSCE.

For the Western Balkans, the message is that progress in reforms does not necessarily eliminate the impact of political disagreements on membership.

If the EU does not set clearer and more consistent standards for the protection of minorities, candidate countries may continue to face a process where technical criteria and political decision-making do not always match.

This is precisely the gap that the study highlights: a criterion that has faded in the enlargement methodology, but still carries considerable weight in the European destiny of the Balkans.


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