Western Balkans's striving for EU membership loses momentum: Bulgarian expert

The future accession of the Western Balkan countries to the European Union (EU) is becoming increasingly blurred, and has lost its development momentum, a Bulgarian expert said here on Friday.

Lyubomir Kyuchukov, director of the Economics and International Relations Institute, said at a roundtable discussion on the road forward for the Balkans, that the EU has been shifting its focus from enlargement to its internal problems.

Enlargement is no longer a priority, "and the question is whether it remains as a goal," Kyuchukov said at the event, attended by eight ambassadors such as those of Italy, Finland and the Netherlands.

Kyuchukov, who was Bulgaria's deputy foreign minister from 2005 to 2009, said the question "when" has become more a question of "if."

Gradually, the future euro membership has been transformed from development momentum to inertia, and its delay has hampered the negotiation process, Kyuchukov said.

For countries of the Western Balkans, the accession process has largely become a technocratic exercise -- the opening and closing of negotiation chapters, he said.

Countries of the region believe the constantly increasing requirements from the EU has become a convenient excuse for postponement of EU accession, Kyuchukov said.

Unfortunately, Western Balkan societies have largely lost hope of EU accession as an attainable horizon, which has undermined the incentive to reform governments, Kyuchukov said. Endit