Wider Europe

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I am drilling down on two issues: Ukraine's tough task now that EU accession talks have started and a look into the EU's latest Russia sanctions.

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Wider Europe Briefing: Ukraine's Accession Homework And More EU Sanctions On Russia

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Briefing #1: Ukraine Opens EU Accession Talks; Now Comes The Hard Part

What You Need To Know: On June 15, Ukraine (along with Moldova) finally started EU accession talks after a two-year blockade by Hungary was lifted with the newly sworn in government in Budapest.

Ukraine opened the first of six negotiation clusters into which the 33 policy chapters covering all EU rules and regulations are divided. What Ukraine has to do now -- and for the foreseeable future -- is to incorporate the EU laws in all these areas into their own.

Opening clusters is, as any EU official will tell you, the easy bit. You need unanimity from all EU member states to open the talks, but it's closing them that's the tricky part as Brussels is a stickler for all of its rules being followed. And again, all 27 EU member states need to give their green light for that.

Deep Background: In any EU enlargement process, the first cluster is opened first and closed last -- largely because its five chapters are essential for the basic functioning of any democracy. This is why Brussels refers to cluster one as "the fundamentals."

Three chapters dealing with public procurement, statistics, and financial control are highly technical and could be "closed" relatively quickly even though so far Ukraine has only what the European Commission calls "partial alignment" in these.

But it's the chapters on the rule of law -- namely Chapter 23, which deals with "judiciary and fundamental rights" and Chapter 24, dealing with "justice, freedom and security" -- that are the hardest.

Here, Ukraine (and any other EU candidate) needs to focus first on meeting so-called interim benchmarks before they can close. Ahead of cluster one being opened, all EU member states have set out a common EU position totaling 37 pages, seen by RFE/RL, on what exactly Ukraine has to do to meet those benchmarks.

Drilling Down

• The biggest hurdle for Kyiv is a judicial overhaul in order to reach even the interim benchmarks. The EU common position demands revised vetting procedures for the Ukraine's Supreme Court and other high court judges "without delay."
• It goes on to ask for the "rendering the selection and dismissal procedure for the Prosecutor-General and high-level prosecutors more transparent and merit-based," as well as addressing the backlog in disciplinary cases, reducing the shortages of judges and support staff, introducing an effective periodic performance evaluation of judges and prosecutors, reforming the Bar, and improving the legal education system.
• Then there's tackling and preventing corruption, which has been a major concern for many EU member states, notably after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year tried to throttle the country's two anti-corruption agencies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO).
• Unsurprisingly, the EU is asking for increased powers for both, including extended jurisdiction for NABU to cover "all high-risk public positions" and for SAPO to be given "necessary powers to start criminal proceedings against Members of Parliament without prior approval of the prosecutor-general."
• Some of the asks are hard to measure, so it will be up to the European Commission and member states to judge whether Ukraine, for example, makes "further progress," as the document puts it, in several areas such as asset declarations, whistleblower protection, conflicts of interest, lobbying, financing of political parties, and electoral campaigns.
• It will be equally tricky to judge when Kyiv has "made tangible progress toward a solid track record of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions in corruption cases, in particular final convictions at high level, and increased the number and overall value of seized, frozen and confiscated assets."
• Or, for that matter, to qualify what it means to demonstrate "a solid track record of investigations, prosecutions and final convictions in all fields of serious and organised crime."
• EU officials tell me the wording is kept deliberately vague because they want Ukraine to show progress over a longer period of time to make sure a revamped justice system is really working. That means keeping Ukraine waiting before it joins -- something Ukrainians, hoping for speedy EU membership, might not want to hear.

Briefing #2: What's In The Latest Russia Sanctions Proposal?

What You Need To Know: The EU keeps piling sanctions on Russia. Less than two months after adopting its 20th package since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Commission on June 9 presented EU member states with the proposed 21st package.

The key takeaway is the proposed blacklisting of high-ranking Russian individuals such as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow; Arkady Dvorkovich, head of the International Chess Federation; and historian Vladimir Medinsky, who was part of Moscow's negotiating team meeting Ukrainian officials earlier this year. Hungary's previous government had vetoed their blacklisting, but the new leaders in Budapest are in support of the sanctions, according to EU sources RFE/RL spoke to.

Deep Background: On the sectoral side, a leaked version of the proposal seen by RFE/RL didn't include anything hard-hitting. But it does finally block the import of Russian-caught fish, notably Alaska pollock and cod, and proposes banning imports of copper ores, nickel ores, lead ores, precious-metals ores and unwrought zinc alkali.

EU operators would be banned from exporting items to Russia such as nickel powders, metal, and alloys used in corrosion-resistant coating of jet engines, beryllium powders used in propellants and high-performance alloys, tapes, and strips -- all essential components used in drone production.

Another new thing is a proposed dedicated ban for crypto-asset services to third countries that are helping Russia circumvent sanctions. No country is currently listed, but a transaction ban targets 11 specific crypto platforms or firms that Brussels says have aided the Kremlin in dodging restrictive measures, including in Belarus, Georgia, Marshall Islands, Nigeria, Panama and the United Arab Emirates.

The EU also calls for a transaction ban on a Kyrgyz bank connected to the Russian Mir card payment system, and three Kyrgyz and two Kazakh companies are also targeted for supplying Russia with military goods.

Drilling Down

• As with every sanctions package, the EU adds more vessels to its blacklist that the bloc believes are part of Russia's so-called shadow fleet. Thirty new ships are proposed for this round, potentially taking the total number to 660.
• It would also become a sanctionable offense to sell LNG tankers to Russia, copying a similar ban already in place for oil tankers. As with oil tankers, there's a proposal to introduce a "No Russia clause" when selling LNG tankers to third countries.
• To adapt to skyrocketing oil prices due to the conflict in the Middle East, the European Commission suggests suspending for six months the oil price cap, which currently stands at $44.10.
• With the Russian economy benefiting from soaring oil prices, the sanctions text notes that "given the recent exceptional disturbances in the markets for crude oil and petroleum products and to ensure that the price cap remains effective in achieving its objectives, it is appropriate to suspend the amendment of the price cap."
• Taking up on an Estonian proposal floated already in February ,the European Commission is proposing banning entry to the Schengen zone by anyone who has fought with the Russian Army or any pro-Kremlin proxy group in Ukraine in the past four years.
• The main challenge here will be all the fact-checking involved. Estonia has relied on both social media accounts and intelligence to put thousands for combatants on the Schengen entry ban, which in theory should be applicable throughout the entire area but would require individual countries to continuously monitor the Schengen Information System (SIS) and make sure they haven't issued tourist visas to some of these individuals.
• Finally, the sanctions package suggests various legal ways to protect EU firms for upholding Russia sanctions, such as an amendment ensuring EU courts can order "anti-enforcement injunctions" to deter enforcement of Russian judgments in third countries.
• Currently, the scope is limited to more specific types of Russian judgments such as banking, but the new proposal covers all Russian legal attempts to challenge any EU sanctions decision.
• There will also be a new instrument for EU firms to have the possibility to sue third-country contractual parties if these parties sue the EU firm outside the bloc for having suspended or terminated contracts in order to comply with sectoral sanctions imposed on Russia.

Looking Ahead

There are plenty of meetings in Brussels this week, but keep an eye on the NATO defense ministerial on June 18. It is the last time the alliance's defense ministers meet before the NATO Summit in Ankara in early July, and all eyes will be on US defense chief Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth expects European allies to present concrete plans on how they will increase defense spending. He will also undoubtably be asked about reports that Washington plans to reduce its military footprint in Europe.

That's all for this week! Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition subscribe here.

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I am drilling down on two issues: a damning rule-of-law verdict for Serbia and the latest Franco-German EU enlargement proposal.

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Wider Europe Briefing: Brussels Slams Serbia's Rule Of Law Shortfall

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Briefing #1: A Damning Report On Serbia

What You Need To Know: The European Commission has produced a damning report on the lack of progress made on issues concerning the rule of law in Serbia.

The annual progress report, seen by RFE/RL, was shared with EU member states in late May and indicates that there has been little or no progress in areas such as the fight against corruption, media freedom, and the functioning and independence of the country’s judiciary.

The report tracks the efforts made by Belgrade in EU accession chapters 23 and 24, which deal with how closely an EU candidate country aligns with the bloc’s rules and regulations with respect to justice and fundamental rights.

The internal document is produced each spring for Serbia, as well as Montenegro, and always comes halfway between the European Commission’s yearly enlargement reports in the autumn, which assess progress across all policy areas in countries seeking EU membership.

Deep Background: The idea is that this document is supposed to guide current member states in assessing how well (or how badly) some countries are doing in what Brussels regards as the two most complicated negotiation blocks.

But while Montenegro is streaming ahead, with the aim of becoming EU member state No. 28 by 2028, Serbia has stood still since late 2021.

This is largely down to the fact that many of the Russia hawks in the bloc are unhappy with Belgrade not aligning with EU sanctions on Moscow since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. There are also doubts about the rule of law in the Balkan country.

And the latest report -- possibly the harshest Brussels has issued on Serbia in years -- will do the country no favors.

Drilling Down

• Perhaps the most critical assessment in the 16-page document concerns the media environment, with the text noting that “the number of attacks and cases of pressure against journalists increased and were not consistently condemned by the authorities, including physical attacks, some of which took place in the presence of police who did not respond.”
• It adds that female journalists “are particularly vulnerable to threats and attacks, especially online,” and that several verbal attacks by high-level officials against reporters “persisted and have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.”
• The picture is equally grim when it comes to the judiciary. The document states that “political pressure on the judiciary and the prosecution services, including in relation to prosecution of high-profile cases, has significantly increased, while there is limited follow-up by relevant institutions to address and ensure accountability for such instances of interference.”
• It notes that government officials, sometimes at the highest levels, make “undue public comments on ongoing investigations or court proceedings, including on the work of individual prosecutors and judges.”
• Other issues highlighted include the absence of a court case management system linking courts and prosecutors across the country, an uneven distribution of workload among judges, and the failure to pass several laws aimed at strengthening the judiciary's independence and transparency.
• There is a similar story when it comes to the fight against corruption. The document says that the current law on corruption prevention is “generally well-designed” but adds that it doesn’t extend to all high-ranking public officials and that there is a lack of enforcement and no proper verification of asset declarations.
• There has also not been any progress “in a number of large-scale corruption cases,” including the investigation into the canopy collapse at the Novi Sad railway station in 2024, which killed 16 people.
• The text also covers the processing of war crimes from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Here, it just notes that Belgrade’s track record has not improved, citing a staggering backlog of 1,731 pre-investigative cases.
• The country’s judiciary has, according to the text, failed to include financial compensation for war crime victims in any criminal proceedings, while 7,608 people are still missing due to the conflict. There has also been no progress in terms of cooperation with both Croatia and Kosovo on this matter.
• In fact, the only positive remarks in the text are that Serbia cooperates effectively with Brussels in housing irregular migrants trying to get into the bloc in various reception and transit centers, and that Belgrade is working well with Europol in the fight against organized crime groups, notably drug traffickers.

Briefing #2: Will A French-German Proposal Really Speed Up EU Enlargement?

What You Need To Know: Rarely does a week go by in Brussels these days without new ideas and proposals for European Union enlargement.

With Ukraine and Moldova set to open accession talks next week, Montenegro aiming to conclude its negotiations this year, and Iceland due to hold a referendum in August on resuming talks suspended more than a decade ago, EU enlargement is no longer an issue that only preoccupies a few European Commission officials and some diplomats from (mainly) eastern member states as has been the case in recent decades.

Last month, France and Germany produced separate discussion papers on how to deal with EU enlargement going forward and on June 4 Berlin and Paris circulated a joint text, seen by RFE/RL, called A New Momentum For Enlargement. The document was meant to provide food for thought ahead of last week’s EU-Western Balkans summit and the upcoming EU-Moldova meeting.

Deep Background: The key premise of the latest France-German three-pager is “to complete the Union as a truly European Union” adding that “to turn this aspiration into reality and to inject a new dynamism, we must provide additional incentives as part of a merit-based, gradual integration process and streamline the current process to make it more efficient and to allow for faster and deeper integration into the EU.”

The concept of gradual integration is hardly new. Candidate countries are already being drawn into parts of the EU system before accession, through preferential market access, participation in programs such as the Erasmus student exchange scheme, and initiatives including the EU’s roaming-free mobile phone area and the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), which allows cross-border euro payments to be processed as easily as domestic transfers.

As was the case with other recent discussion papers that preceded this one, it also includes the threat of reversibility, allowing for integration gains to be rolled back “in case of backsliding of the relevant candidate country in its reform process and with regard to the EU core values and principles.”

In practice, this has usually meant the loss of EU funding or delays in the accession process. The former has already happened, while the latter has become commonplace regardless of backsliding, as member states have repeatedly vetoed enlargement decisions for a variety of reasons. And given that no country has joined the EU since Croatia back in 2013, this has not been much of a threat up to now.

Drilling Down

• The biggest worry about these papers, however, is that all the ideas and proposals aren’t really meant to boost candidate countries’ hopes of joining the club, but are actually creating some sort of “more comfortable waiting room” as one official from a candidate country put it to RFE/RL, or worse, a sort of “second-tier” membership.
• The joint text insists that the end goal remains unchanged: “full EU membership remains unaffected, our intention is neither to replace full EU membership nor to prolong the path towards it but the opposite: We want to create incentives which foster swifter progress on that path.”
• While it is true that the EU might be about to expand again, it is also true that many member states don’t want this to happen too quickly given that the bloc’s common budget will likely need to be expanded -- something that net contributors aren’t too keen on -- and also because the European Union itself will need to undergo structural reforms, which tend to be very complicated to agree on.
• A key indication of this came from newly elected Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who recently announced on X that Hungary and Ukraine had reached an agreement on minority rights that would allow Kyiv to start accession talks. He also suggested that Ukraine's path to EU membership could take 10-15 years.
• And while Kyiv and many other prospective EU members still hope for some sort of fast-track route into the club, most Brussels officials quietly contend that the bloc’s expansion is unlikely to materialize until well into the 2030s.
• Interestingly, the Franco-German document is aimed at Moldova and the five EU hopefuls in the Western Balkans -- Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
• Montenegro is assumed to be exempt as it will likely join the bloc before the end of the decade.
• Ukraine is not mentioned at all. Nor are Turkey, another major candidate country, or potential candidates such as Iceland.
• In a previous document, Germany had suggested an “associate membership” model for Ukraine while it waits for full membership. Under the proposal, Kyiv would gain a role in EU institutions -- including through “associate commissioners without portfolios” and “associate members of the European Parliament” -- as well as a presence on councils where member states meet, albeit without voting rights.
• The new, Franco-German offer for Moldova and the five Western Balkan candidates is somewhat less generous on the institutional front. It doesn’t suggest membership without a vote but rather “joint meetings of the European Commission/Members of the European Parliament with representatives of the Western Balkans countries and Moldova each twice a year”.
• Another suggestion is to hold “more frequent joint parliamentary committees composed of members of the European Parliament and national parliamentarians from the Western Balkans countries and Moldova.”
• The candidate countries would also be allowed to participate in informal EU summits and council meetings as observers without the right to vote, such as the monthly gathering of the bloc’s foreign ministers.

Looking Ahead

There will be quite a lot of Russia sanctions in the works in Brussels this week.

First, the European Commission is set to share its proposal for the bloc’s 21st round of sanctions on June 9.

With Hungary no longer blocking everything, the key thing to look at now is whether Russian Patriarch Kirill will be included and whether some oligarchs that have already been de-listed due to Hungary, such as Moshe Kantor, will be proposed for blacklisting again.

The following day, on June 10, the bloc’s ambassadors will also approve more sanctions on military companies helping the Russian war machine as well as firms supporting the Kremlin’s shadow fleet.

That's all for this week! Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on X @RikardJozwiak, or via e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition subscribe here.