Speech by Commissioner Marta Kos at the EU meets the Balkans Forum 2025

"Check against delivery"

In the last couple of months, our world has changed fundamentally. What does this mean for the European Union? What does it mean for the Balkans? And for the enlargement process?

Dear guests,

The EU Meets the Balkans Forum is therefore very timely in the current volatile context.

We have effectively entered a phase in which geopolitical competition and outright aggression in our immediate neighbourhood are undermining our efforts to consolidate democracy and threaten to transform Europe into a battleground of competing interests.

For the first time in the history of the EU we are negotiating with a country that is at war. For the first time, it is not just about the candidate countries fulfilling the conditions to become members, it is not just about the EU being ready, we also face external disruptive forces that want to see us fail.

Today, we find ourselves in a defining moment. The conviction that we Europeans need to do a lot more to protect our security and our prosperity is commonplace. Public polling across the continent shows a large majority of Europeans expect us to take responsibility for our own security.

Today, we see our continent in motion! This is good.

The new geopolitical landscape is moving our neighbourhood to gravitate even closer to the European Union as an anchor of stability and democratic values.

Today, more than ever, the unification of Europe is the way to consolidate stability and ensure sustainable peace and security. And Enlargement is our most strategic policy tool.

Because the EU's offer is a positive one: It brings not just economic strength, it brings not just democratic institutions, and legal certainty. But most of all, it means belonging to a community of shared values.

This applies not just to the Western Balkans and in the East. Iceland intends to hold a referendum on restarting accession talks. Public sentiment towards the EU is at its highest in Norway in 25 years. And last week, for the first time ever, Switzerland attended an EU finance ministers' meeting.

President von der Leyen recently said: “We are living in extraordinary times”. And extraordinary times require extraordinary answers. I agree with her, we should dare to think beyond what we know today. And so do many of our Member States.

We should think out of the box, in a time when there is no more box. Just look at the new German coalition agreement, which defines enlargement as a geopolitical necessity. And it opens the door to new ideas such as including candidates as observers in the European Parliament and the Council, while phasing them in into EU programmes and policies.

I am stressing this here, because a Europe in motion is creating a window of opportunity to take bold steps towards completing the unification of Europe. Enlargement is a clear priority of the European Commission.

I know there is a frustration in many of our candidate countries. During the last 15 years, the EU was too often consumed by itself: a debt crisis, the challenges of migration, an important member leaving the Union, the consequences of the pandemic and an unprecedented energy crisis.

But this period of enlargement fatigue is over. The current generation of European leaders understands that uniting our continent is essential to guarantee peace, freedom, security and prosperity for all Europeans.

There is now a window of opportunity we have to seize together.

This is why we are working on speeding up negotiations as much as possible.  And we are already seeing progress that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Just earlier this week we have opened another negotiating cluster with Albania, the second already, since I took office 5 months ago, and likely not the last one this year. 

Seizing this window of opportunity requires leadership that embraces transformational reforms. It requires the ability to make difficult compromises. It requires a mindset, Ladies and Gentlemen, that breaks away from the ghosts of the past and is looking to the future.

I know that often what we are asking is politically not easy. It touches established power structures; it challenges vested interests, sometimes it touches on questions of identity, and it demands a clear geopolitical orientation.

While it requires a clear steer, it cannot only work top down. It requires the engagement of the whole of society - from civil society organisations, academia, businesses to local communities. Citizens need to feel they have a stake in this project.

It has often been a shortcoming of the accession process that the big benefits of EU membership often seemed too far away. We have been asking leaders to spend political capital on major reforms, without being able to show benefits that change the lives of voters already in the short term.  

This is something we are addressing with the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans. It helps with financial incentives in return for important reforms. And it will allow you to bring some of the benefits of the EU – on an equal footing with Member States – to your citizens and businesses even before you become members of the EU.

Some countries in the Western Balkans have already joined the Single Euro Payments Area which will make money transfers faster and cheaper. This will soon mean that, for example, a young entrepreneur in Tirana can receive payments from customers across Europe as easily as a business in Vienna or Dublin. I hope to see you all join SEPA soon.

And there is a lot more potential, especially if we get regional cooperation right. Take, for example, the promise of the full implementation of the Green Lanes. They will help cut border waiting times 50% to 70%. For any exporter from the Western Balkans to the EU, this will be huge. Especially now that European companies want to reduce geopolitical risk by investing closer to home, we should make it as easy as possible for them to choose the Balkans. 

But there is still so much potential to untap! This region will flourish once integrated in the European Union and freed from conflicts and borders – physical and mental – just like it happened in so many other parts of the Union.

We are doing the same with Ukraine. We are accelerating the integration of the country into many more parts of the Single Market, even ahead of membership. Because security guarantees to the country cannot just be military. Enlargement is the political arm of security guarantees. They will also have to build on economic strength and secure energy supplies.

Whatever new ideas we explore in Ukraine to deepen economic and investment links will also be considered for all other candidate countries.

So, my advice to all candidate countries is: keep working on your enlargement reforms and on regional cooperation. Take advantage of the Growth Plan and other EU instruments to make it a success – and to show that you are ready for more.

As the Commissioner for Enlargement, I consider all 10 candidate countries equally and I'm ready to invest in all of them to bring them closer. In some countries violation of human rights, basic freedoms and democratic principles make accession difficult.  But I will not turn my back to any of you and will continue pushing to get all candidate countries move forward on the EU track. I want to get as many of you as possible over the finish line during my mandate.

In the past months, the European Commission has launched many new initiatives. And every time we made sure that we are already factoring in our candidates. We did that with the EU Competitiveness Compass. We did that with the Clean Energy Deal, and again with the EU Preparedness Strategy and the Internal Security Strategy. Because it is in our shared interest that our future members are on board from the first day of implementation.  

Next to enlargement, we need to think broader about the environment in our neighbourhood. We need to look with fresh eyes at the Black Sea region. This is why I will present, together with HRVP Kallas, the new EU Black Sea Strategy before the summer. It will aim to address the evolving situation in the region, focusing on security and key region-wide challenges and opportunities (maritime issues, environmental and climate action, demining, among others).

This will be a key connecting policy framework for the countries in the region. Romania and Bulgaria sit right in the middle of these considerations, together with Türkiye who plays a key role in the Black Sea region.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The world is changing. And Europe is changing with it. This comes with new risks, but also many new opportunities. If we want to seize those chances together, and shield each other from the fallout of geopolitical changes, we need to integrate much more closely. And much more rapidly.

My message to the candidates is: When you deliver on implementing the necessary reforms, I will be your best advocate in Brussels and in the Member States so that the EU delivers as well.

I have no doubt that we can seize this historic moment and complete the unification of our continent. At last.

Let us rise to the moment together.