The Berlin Process: 10 years of hope and disillusionment

Whenever Aleksandra Tomanic plans an event in Bosnia-Herzegovina, she has to think carefully about whether she can invite people from Kosovo. Although Kosovo is not far from Bosnia, traveling from one country to the other is laborious and time consuming.

To get a visa for Bosnia-Herzegovina, citizens of Kosovo have to travel to Skopje, the capital of neighboring North Macedonia. The same is true for Bosnians who want to travel to Kosovo.

"This is the case even though it was agreed two years ago in Berlin that the visa requirements between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo would be abolished," says Tomanic, director of the Belgrade-based European Fund for the Balkans.

Slow implementation of agreements

Indeed, the prime ministers of the six countries that make up the Western Balkans — Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — signed three agreements in November 2022 pledging to mutually recognize ID cards, university degrees and some professional qualifications. Nevertheless, implementation has stalled.

"But this is not the only unfulfilled promise of the Berlin process," says Tomanic.

Hope for the Western Balkans

The Berlin Process was launched in 2014 on the initiative of the then German chancellor Angela Merkel. Just prior to that, the then president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, had announced a pause in the enlargement of the EU.

To support the states of the Western Balkans in their bid to move closer to the EU, Merkel invited the heads of state and government of these countries to a conference in Berlin in the summer of 2014.

The conference was attended by representatives of the six Western Balkan countries plus Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, France and the host, Germany. The EU institutions, international financial institutions, civil society, young people and businesses in the region were also represented.

Tenth anniversary in 2024

The original intention was that the Berlin Process would last only four years. This fall, however, the initiative celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Over the years, the process has grown and expanded. It now has 10 partner countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom.

Summits have taken place in a different European city every year since 2014. Every year, the countries hosting the summits have added new priority areas to the agenda, creating new conferences of ministers and focus areas.

A decade after the process's launch, there are now annual conferences on economic cooperation, youth exchange, security, digitalization, green energy, agriculture and Roma and gender issues.

The 10th set of Berlin Process meetings is taking place in Berlin and has been going on since June. The summit of heads of state and government of the Berlin Process countries will be hosted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on October 14.

Keeping the prospect of EU membership alive

Berlin-based Balkan expert Bodo Weber feels that these annual meetings are a positive outcome of the Berlin Process: "Regular meetings of heads of state and government and ministers have become the norm," he told DW. This means, says Weber, that the states of the Western Balkans have kept the prospect of EU membership alive.

But Weber points out that the Berlin Process has not stabilized relations in the region in the long run. "Serbia, which does not recognize Kosovo, continues to pursue an aggressive regional policy on the basis of Srpski svet," says Weber.

Srpski svet, which translates as "Serbian world," is a concept propagated by the nationalist wing of the Serbian leadership that seeks the unification of Serbs across a variety of Balkan countries. These endeavors have a destabilizing effect on the region.

A lack of tangible results?

Aleksandra Tomanic also has a critical view of what the Berlin Process has achieved: "Ten years after it was initiated, the Berlin Process still seems very improvised," she says, adding that while there are numerous formats and meetings, there is a lack of tangible results, and many of the agreements reached have not been implemented.

"Just like EU enlargement, the biggest omission is the political dimension of cooperation, which has been neglected," she says.

Tomanic goes on to say that many problems have not been addressed in the Berlin Process in order to allow compromises to be reached. "In Serbia, democratic structures continue to be eroded, and President [Aleksandar] Vucic is using the conflict to consolidate his political control," she adds.

Tomanic says that Vucic is not letting regime critics from other countries into Serbia and has weakened both the media and freedom of expression. She is disappointed that nothing has been said about this in the Berlin Process. "The main thing is that they can take another family photo that creates the impression of success."

Model projects of regional cooperation

But it's not all doom and gloom: In addition to the gradual abolition of roaming charges for Internet and telephone calls between the states of the Western Balkans, the RYCO youth exchange and cooperation program is considered one of the Berlin Process's success stories. So far, it has brought 31,000 young people together from across the region.

In addition, the EU has made €30 billion (just under $33 billion) available to the Western Balkans through an economic and investment program: Some €16 billion of this has been invested in infrastructure, energy and digitalization projects.

That being said, the mobility agreements that sought to facilitate closer economic ties in the region have largely failed. Moreover, the unresolved conflict between Serbia and Kosovo continues to block key progress in regional cooperation.

A new free trade agreement

Now, as the eleventh year of the Berlin Process begins, another agreement — the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) — seeks to bring the countries of the Western Balkans closer to the EU's common market. For CEFTA, Kosovo is no longer seen as a UN protectorate, but as an independent state.

Just before next week's Berlin Process summit, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti succumbed to the pressure exerted by Germany's Special Representative for the Countries of the Western Balkans, Manuel Sarrazin, and agreed to lift his ban on the import of Serbian goods, which his government imposed in June 2023 to stop the smuggling of weapons from Serbia to Kosovo.

Speaking at a meeting of foreign ministers from Berlin Process countries earlier this month, Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, reiterated the EU's will to integrate the six states of the Western Balkans, saying that the EU Member States agreed that they did not want any gray areas in Europe that Russian President Vladimir Putin could see as his sphere of influence.

"In our view, the accession of the Western Balkan states — just like the accession of Ukraine and Georgia — is a geopolitical necessity," said Baerbock. "We don't see your countries as 'gray areas.' We see you as partners. As fellow Europeans. And we want you to join the EU as full members as soon as possible."

This article was originally published in German.