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'm drilling down on two major issues: what Ukraine can expect from the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, and if the EU has finally worked out a new migration policy.

Brief #1: What Will Ukraine Get At The Upcoming NATO Summit?

What You Need To Know: The NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 will essentially focus on one thing: Ukraine and its relationship with the military alliance. Two things will for sure be offered to Kyiv. First, there will be an agreement on a multiyear, possibly even open-ended, assistance package to assist Ukraine in transitioning from Soviet-era military doctrine to NATO standards and weapons. This, of course, is already under way with all the weapons and training provided by Western allies since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A potential pot of 500 million euros ($538 million) a year has been touted to assist Ukraine, but that figure could rise or fall depending on the discussion in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The second deliverable Ukraine will likely receive is an update of the political relationship between Kyiv and the alliance. The current NATO-Ukraine Commission is set to become a fully-fledged NATO-Ukraine Council -- in essence meaning that Kyiv will be sitting at the table as an equal. In the commission previously, Ukraine was only invited to participate in meetings with the NATO member states, but now it can call a meeting whenever it wants, with NATO officials believing that a council will deepen cooperation in various policy fields.

Setting up the council with Ukraine is also seen as the morally right thing to do, as there is already a NATO-Russia Council, even though it has been dormant since early 2022. The hope among NATO officials is that the inaugural NATO-Ukraine Council will be chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Vilnius, but it's more than possible that Hungary might spoil that party in July. For years, Budapest has blocked meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission over its testy bilateral relations with Kyiv, partly because of ethnic Hungarian minority rights in Ukraine.

Deep Background: More money and an upgraded meeting format will be very beneficial to Ukraine, but Kyiv is looking and hoping for more. Rather, the country wants to know when it can join the alliance, and what sort of security guarantees it can rely on until then. Those two questions will be on everyone's mind going into the two-day powwow. Kyiv was already promised future membership at NATO's Bucharest summit in 2008 and the alliance has since then continuously repeated that its door remains open. But it never offered a pathway, or in NATO terms, a Membership Action Plan (MAP).

So, in short, Vilnius cannot be another Bucharest. Yet, it is also clear that the offer of immediate membership for Kyiv won't be on the table in Lithuania. Western officials and politicians alike have pointed out that this doesn't make sense for a country in the middle of a war with a nuclear-armed neighbor. Instead, expect plenty of creativity on how the wording around future membership of the bloc will be phrased in the final summit declaration and something similar on security guarantees that might not make it into the final communique but is rather agreed on the sidelines.

Drilling Down:

• The drafting of the Vilnius summit declaration has just started, and the most ambitious language will be something akin to Ukraine receiving an "invitation to join NATO when conditions allow." The most controversial word in that sentence is "invite," which many might see as too much too soon. The most likely scenario is that there will be some sort of qualifier before it, such as "consider inviting" or "look into the possibility of inviting."
• Some eastern NATO members want a concrete timeline or plan for when Ukraine can join, but it is hard to agree on anything more precise when no one knows quite how the war will pan out. But their position is believed to be a key starting point for the negotiations.
• Security guarantees are splitting opinions as well. French President Emmanuel Marcon recently talked about "clear and tangible security guarantees" for Ukraine. He noted that Kyiv is already de facto being protected by the alliance and is so well-equipped that it needs to be "reanchored" in some sort of security framework.
• Much talk has focused on an "Israel scenario" -- essentially meaning arming the country to the teeth. But there are certain issues with that. One is that Israel is a nuclear power; Ukraine isn't, but it is fighting one. Israel also sometimes strikes deep into neighboring countries to secure its safety, sometimes even as far as Iran. It is believed that Ukraine has carried out strikes on Russian territory, for example, using drones and artillery to target sites like fuel depots and pipelines. While NATO countries have generally looked the other way, it does make the alliance and its members very nervous.
• Of course, there are also the types of bilateral security guarantees given to the likes of Sweden and Finland by the United Kingdom and the United States during their ratification period to be NATO members. But, unlike Ukraine, those countries are not in a war that is likely to drag on. Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been promoting a "security compact" in which a core group of allies provide yet unspecified security guarantees -- something that also has been referred to as "deterrence by denial." But what does it mean in practice? And would it eventually entail Western boots on the ground in Ukraine?
• Many officials I have spoken to on background, notably from eastern NATO members, see all the talk of various "security guarantees" as something of a fig leaf, so the alliance can avoid making any crucial decision on membership. They point out that the only security guarantee NATO can truly offer is its Article 5 guarantee -- an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all. For them, membership sooner rather than later is the only real guarantee. In Vilnius, the hard part will be finding the right language to satisfy everyone -- including, of course, Ukraine.

Brief #2: A New Agreement On Migrants Coming To The EU

What You Need To Know: Of all the crises that have hit the European Union in recent years, the migration crisis of 2015-16 was probably the one that truly threatened to rip the bloc apart. Frontline Mediterranean member states such as Greece, Malta, and Italy were furious about what they perceived as a lack of solidarity from the rest; several eastern member states flatly refused to take in migrants; and countries such as Germany and Sweden saw a huge influx of new arrivals that has shaped political debates ever since. As one senior EU official recently put it in a briefing to journalists: "in Europe, you still lose or win elections on the issue of migration."

So, it was with a certain triumph that the bloc's interior ministers, after three years of difficult talks, on June 8 announced that they had reached an agreement of sorts to revamp the way the bloc handles all aspects of migration. It comes as so-called "irregular border crossings" at the EU's external borders are spiking. In the first four months of the year, the number of crossings reached nearly 81,000 -- 30 percent more than a year ago and the highest total for the January-April period since 2016. Most of those crossings are coming through what is called the Central Mediterranean route, meaning largely that people, mostly of African or Middle Eastern origin, are trying to get into Italy.

Deep Background: Italy, whose hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni has made limiting migration the cornerstone of her premiership, is the key player and has become more insistent on asking other member states to relieve some of the burden the country is currently facing. And while the entire issue is complex, with two legislative proposals underpinning the new migration pact, each of which has well over 100 pages, the rough battle lines are that many southern states want others in the EU to share the burden, while many northern countries fear that southerners are just letting in migrants so they can continue on to other EU states, a practice known as the secondary movement of migrants.

Ukrainian refugees are in a different situation. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine last year, and for the first time ever, the EU triggered the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainians fleeing the war. That meant that they could get residence permits in the bloc and have access to local labor markets and other forms of welfare benefits. This measure was recently and unanimously prolonged by another year. So, for now, the 4 million Ukrainians currently residing in the EU are covered by the directive. In the future, that could well change.

Drilling Down:

• So, what is the centerpiece of the June 8 agreement? Essentially, it is to get rid of the long-standing current framework in which the first country that receives migrants, normally a Mediterranean EU member state, is legally required to process their asylum applications and send them back if they don't get refugee status.
• To avoid mandatory migrant quotas to ease the burden on the frontline states -- something that is anathema for some eastern member states -- a concept called "mandatory solidarity" is envisioned. You either accept a certain number of migrants per year based on criteria such as a member state's size and GDP per capita, or you can pay to opt out from the relocation program.
• For months, member states have been haggling about what price per migrant a country should pay to be able to opt out, settling in the end on 20,000 euros ($21,543) -- a figure derived by calculating the average cost to process and accommodate an asylum seeker for one year. Still many, notably in the east, are balking at such a high cost and have asked why they should pay when they are already hosting many Ukrainian refugees, which is a significant financial burden.
• The aim is to relocate some 30,000 people per year throughout the bloc. Should the target be missed, then EU states could be allocated a certain number of asylum seekers instead of sending them back to the first country of entry.
• The deal was sealed when Italy received assurances that it could reject migrants staying on its territory and when the number of countries that EU countries consider safe enough for denied applicants to be sent to was increased.
• More money for Tunisia was also promised, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announcing on June 11 that the country could receive as much as 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) to help the economy and prevent people from attempting to cross the Mediterranean in the first place.
• In the end, not all the 27 member states gave a thumbs-up to the agreement when voting in the EU's Council of Ministers. Bulgaria, Malta, Lithuania, and Slovakia abstained, while Hungary and Poland voted against, but the pact passed by qualified-majority voting -- 55 percent of member states, representing at least 65 percent of the EU population, voting in favor.
• Arguments ranged from the fact that 20,000 euros per migrant is too steep and, in fact, constitutes a compulsory relocation and that the pact will actually act as a trigger for people coming to Europe. Don't be surprised to see Budapest and Warsaw challenging the decision in court or even refusing to participate.
• But it doesn't stop there. What the 27 are trying to agree on is just something resembling a joint position to enter negotiations with the more migration-friendly European Parliament, which is a co-legislator together with the Council of Ministers on home-affairs issues. Expect talks and tricky negotiations to continue throughout the year and the pact to potentially be ready ahead of the European Parliament elections in June 2024, where it's likely to be a real hot-button issue.

Looking Ahead

EU member states might on June 14 finally agree on the bloc's next sanctions package on Russia. Presented in early May, many thought that it would be agreed quickly but approval has been held up, notably by Germany, which has been busy watering down a proposal that eventually could make the EU go after third countries and companies that the bloc deems to be intentionally circumventing sanctions on the Kremlin. Hungary and Greece have also reportedly been angered that some companies linked to Athens and Budapest have been put on a Ukrainian "name and shame list" of entities still doing business with Moscow and have said that Kyiv must do something about this before the new sanctions package can be green-lit.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are over in Turkey and this means that diplomatic efforts between Stockholm and Ankara will resume this week to find a way to lift the Turkish veto on Sweden's NATO accession. Senior civil servants from the two countries will meet in Turkey early this week before the defense ministers from both states are likely to discuss the issue again when they meet for the NATO defense ministerial meeting in Brussels on June 15-16. The alliance's goal is still that Sweden can become the 32nd NATO member before the Vilnius summit in mid-July, but the clock is ticking for the Turkish (and Hungarian) parliaments to overcome their objections and vote in favor of Swedish membership ratification.

That's all for this week. Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @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 in this week's newsletter, I'm reporting from the GLOBSEC forum in Bratislava where I take a closer look at Ukraine's road to the EU and the cautionary tale the Western Balkans offers Kyiv.

Special Report: The GLOBSEC Conference In Bratislava

Last week, I spent three days in the Slovak capital attending GLOBSEC's annual Bratislava forum -- arguably the biggest think-tank event in Central Europe -- where politicians, officials, academics, and journalists were discussing the future of Europe from early breakfast to late-night cocktails. With Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, there are a lot of voices in Brussels and elsewhere claiming that the political center of the continent is slowly but surely shifting eastward.

Partly, this is because the European Union and NATO are now seriously looking at a future with expanded membership eastward. But also, perhaps, because most of the Central and Eastern Europeans were proven right about Russia and the Kremlin's intentions to undermine the continent's security and political architecture -- something that caught a perhaps complacent Western Europe off guard, despite warnings such as the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea six years later.

Perhaps the biggest sign of Western Europe's realization of this shifting center was the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to GLOBSEC, who was on the way to the European Political Community (EPC) summit in Moldova.

It almost appeared that Macron had tailored his words specifically for a doubting and hawkish Central and Eastern European audience. He admitted that France used to be seen as an arrogant country in this part of the world, but assured the audience that "each and every country is important for us." He dismissed the notion that there is an "old" and a "new" Europe, and he backtracked on his claim from a few years ago that NATO was "brain-dead," now calling the military organization "very useful."

Perhaps the sweetest music for many to hear in Bratislava was Macron's admission that "we have lost opportunities to listen to you" -- a reversal of a famous quote by Jacques Chirac, then French president, who told several Central and Eastern European countries that they had lost a "great opportunity to shut up" when they supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq 20 years ago.

Early on at GLOBSEC, confidence and bonhomie were in the air, with the host, Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, declaring in her opening speech that, a year ago, the West had feared both soaring inflation and rising gas prices but had overcome that. She noted that "we are far more resistant than expected and stronger than the opponent," although adding, "we need to stay the course."

But can it stay the course?

Central and Eastern European countries appear to have won over the Western EU member states that further eastward enlargement is a must. But the "whens" and "hows" are still unanswered, which will delay the eastward shift of Europe's political center. And then, crucially, there is the cautionary tale of the Western Balkans to further complicate the picture.

Brief #1: Ukraine's Journey To The EU Will Be Far From Easy

Deep Background: Ukraine will almost certainly become a member of the EU. But the question is not only when. The question is also if the EU is truly ready for this and, perhaps more importantly, how the bloc will change in order to accommodate Kyiv and other future members. There were some raised eyebrows earlier this year when Ukrainian officials talked about EU membership in as soon as two years.

Since then, such ambitious talk seems to have died down. Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, explained in Bratislava that "we never asked for shortcuts. When we are talking about fast-track membership, we are talking about ourselves."

She noted that Kyiv has already completed a self-screening process of more than 30 different policy chapters of EU laws and regulations the country needs to adopt to become a member. The question is if the EU will accept this.

There was speculation in Brussels and Bratislava last week that Ukraine (and Moldova) could get the green light to start accession talks in December. This usually means that a screening process starts before any real negotiations are under way, a process that can take well over a year. To offer a pertinent example: Albania and North Macedonia officially opened accession talks and began the screening process in July 2022. That screening is still ongoing and will continue deep into the fall before any chapters are opened. Would Ukraine really be able to skip this altogether?

Drilling Down:

• For Ukraine, this is understandably all overshadowed by the catastrophic war. No one I spoke to or listened to in Bratislava expects a quick end to the conflict. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky admitted that Prague is expecting Russia to present a threat to Europe for decades, and the former U.S. secretary of defense, Mark Esper, echoed that, adding that there isn't much optimism when it comes to the Kremlin even "after Putin."
• This will have an impact on Ukraine's and other countries' EU integration. Katarina Mathernova, the deputy director general for neighborhood policy and enlargement in the European Commission -- essentially the body in Brussels that will lead the accession talks with Kyiv -- openly said that there is "no appetite in the EU to let in a country that doesn't control its borders."
• She also added that the decision-making process in the EU isn't indefinitely expandable. This means that the EU needs to reform before it takes in more members. An official from the German Foreign Ministry who focuses on European issues, Anna Luhrmann, talked about the EU's "absorption capacity" and that while Brussels asks candidate countries to do their homework -- i.e., reforms -- the EU must do its homework as well. And that means changing how it's being run.
• There are many ideas on how to transform the EU if more members join. Perhaps not all countries will have their own European commissioner. Perhaps vetoes in some areas will be changed to qualified majority voting (QMV), which would essentially mean that laws are passed if 55 percent of member states representing at least 65 percent of the EU population vote in favor.
• The catch is that to get rid of vetoes you need a consensus. Judging from the conversations in Bratislava, that will be hard to reach. Would France give up a veto in foreign policy or Germany on tax issues? Changes to EU treaties, which could be a possibility in the future, would most probably also have to be approved in some current EU member states via referendums ---- something Brussels has long dreaded after the Dutch, Irish, and French voted against treaty changes earlier this century.
• The other issue is how to pay for it all. Laurence Boone, a French counterpart of Luhrmann, noted that only five EU member states currently are net contributors to the EU budget -- all of them from the West. The question is if Central and Eastern European member states truly are ready to foot the bill for more enlargement?
• A little taste of how difficult Ukraine's entry to the EU could be was offered earlier this spring when Poland and other eastern member states shut their borders to placate farmers angry at the mass of Ukrainian agricultural products that were flowing into the EU market without tariffs.
• Scratch the surface at GLOBSEC and there is a lot more pessimism. When speaking to Slovak officials on background about the upcoming parliamentary elections this fall, one said to me: "Viktor Orban might soon have many friends here in high positions," an allusion to how Slovak politicians could be more in line with the Hungarian prime minister's conciliatory stance toward Moscow, complicated relations with Kyiv, and watering down of EU sanctions measures.
• GLOBSEC's own study about political trends in Central and Eastern Europe for 2023, presented at the forum, showed Slovakia to be an outlier when compared to the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, which all had generally more positive attitudes among the general public toward both Ukraine and Western institutions.
• A full 69 percent of the Slovak respondents agreed that by providing military equipment to Ukraine, Slovakia is provoking Russia and bringing itself closer to the war. Only 58 percent would vote to stay in NATO, and 69 percent agreed with the statement that Ukrainian refugees receive support at the expense of Slovakia's own vulnerable or needy citizens.

Brief #2: For Ukraine, The Western Balkans Is A Cautionary Tale

Deep Background: While the talks in Bratislava focused on Ukraine and its path toward Euro-Atlantic integration, the future of the Western Balkans was also widely discussed. And judging from remarks on how long it has taken for the countries in the region to get closer to Brussels, it should be seen as yet another warning signal to Ukraine not to expect too much too soon from Brussels.

Perhaps the most forthright person bemoaning the state of EU-Western Balkan relations was Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg. Vienna is a keen supporter of bringing the six Western Balkan hopefuls (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia) into the EU, but he didn't mince his words on how difficult that would be. He recalled the historic first EU-Western Balkans summit in the Greek city of Thessaloniki in 2003, when the EU pledged that all former Yugoslav republics plus Albania would become EU member states. Slovenia joined a year later and Croatia in 2013, but no other Balkan country is even close to membership.

"20 years later and not enough has been achieved," he said, noting that the Western Balkans is the EU's first test of geostrategic unity. "If we fail there, we have failed everywhere," Schallenberg said in a panel discussion. And while supporting the future membership of Ukraine and Moldova, he also cautioned against sidelining the Balkan six in favor of fast-tracking Kyiv and Chisinau. "In an Orwellian sense we cannot have somebody who is more equal than others," he said.

Drilling Down

• In her address to the GLOBSEC crowd, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen focused on how to speed up the European integration of the Western Balkans, noting, "it is not enough to say that the door is open."
• Von der Leyen presented a few new proposals, with perhaps the key one being bringing the Western Balkan six closer to the EU's lucrative single market. She noted that those countries should be able to join the digital aspects of the market, for example in e-commerce or cybersecurity, and that this would increase the trade of physical goods and services. She also promised more pre-accession funding for the region, even though no figures were mentioned.
• Other avenues for further integration discussed informally at the conference were the possibilities for Western Balkan countries to join the EU's Horizon Europe funding program for innovation and research, to fully integrate with the union's trans-European transport network policy, TEN-T, and to have the countries' ambassadors to the EU "sit in" on preparatory council meetings in Brussels with representatives from all EU member states.
• The foreign minister of North Macedonia, Bujar Osmani, welcomed the proposal of more integration in the EU before actual membership, saying that the region now is just "hanging" and that this would provide "the scaffolding."
• But he also cautioned that, while EU enlargement might be back at the top of the agenda, these moments have come and gone before. He mentioned the 2015 migration crisis, recalling that there was then an increased awareness of the need to integrate the Western Balkan countries, in part to deal with migrants coming to the European Union through the so-called Western Balkans route. When that crisis faded, Osmani said, so did the enthusiasm.
• The Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, also pointed out that the EU lost out in the Western Balkans during the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, when he said that member states weren't too quick to share the jabs. It resulted in Albania running to Turkey, Serbia to Russia and China, and North Macedonia to anywhere they could get the vaccines from.
• But perhaps the biggest sign of how difficult the EU is finding it to play a decisive role in the region was the chaotic GLOBSEC agenda changes to accommodate Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Alexander Vucic, amid a tense standoff between the two countries.
• There was talk that the leaders would have another round of EU-facilitated dialogue in Bratislava under the supervision of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and his Western Balkans envoy, Miroslav Lajcak. But Vucic never came, and Kurti delayed his arrival by one day.
• Kurti was slated to appear on a panel on the situation in the Western Balkans with Lajcak, but in the end it was downgraded to a stand-alone conversation with former Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic in which he rather dryly joked that, in the Western Balkans, people still live in a way that they don't know what the day will bring.

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

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

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