Political and Economic Governance in the Balkans and Eastern Europe Compared. CEPS Working Document No 2018/06, July 2018

This paper seeks to compare the quality of governance of the non-EU member states of the Western Balkans and certain states of Eastern Europe, namely Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, which share Association Agreements with the EU. Both groups of states aspire to full membership of the EU. While the EU differentiates between the two groups, acknowledging the ‘European perspectives’ (i.e. future EU membership) of the former but not of the latter, the commitments to achieve EU political and economic standards and to adopt or approximate to EU law and policies made by both groups are similar. This makes comparisons between the two groups both feasible and politically significant. Numerous political and economic indicators are used to make these comparisons, from which an overall pattern emerges. The EU now ranks the Balkan states in three tiers according to their accession prospects: Montenegro and Serbia are frontrunners in tier one; Macedonia and Albania in tier two; and Bosnia and Kosovo in tier three. Combining the political and economic indicators, Georgia is comparable and slightly ahead of the Balkan tier one, while Moldova and Ukraine are roughly comparable to the Balkan tier 2, and more advanced than the Balkan tier three. The paper discusses three alternatives for how the EU should adapt its enlargement and neighbourhood policies to these realities. In the first case, the EU would become more consistent and extend the membership perspective to Georgia. In the second case the EU would stick to its current political positions, notwithstanding their obsolescence, yet quietly continue to develop the commonality of the actual policy instruments being applied to both groups. Third, the EU would choose to give strategic profile to this set of common policy instruments by creating a new tier of European integration in the spirit of a multi-speed Europe, which might be called the Wider European Economic Area, or Space, or Community.