By Ivana Sekularac and Andreas Rinke
TIVAT, Montenegro, June 5 (Reuters) - The European Union must show it is willing and able to take in new members, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Friday as the bloc’s leaders gathered with Western Balkan counterparts hoping to join in the coming years.
Enlargement has risen up the EU agenda due to Russia's war against Ukraine, with Kyiv keen to join the bloc to anchor itself in Europe's political mainstream and EU officials declaring that the union should
expand to reduce the influence of foreign powers in its neighbourhood.
But the process of joining is usually long and complex, involving years of negotiations and legal reforms, with approval of all 27 current EU members required to complete each step.
"The European Union has to show that it is capable of enlarging and willing to enlarge and we want to discuss that here," Merz told reporters at the summit in the Montenegrin coastal town of Tivat.
"There are, of course, a whole range of questions that we must answer, that we must answer together, but above all else, it must be clear that this part of Europe belongs within the European Union’s future," Merz added.
"The fact that we have not admitted any new members for 13 years now shows that there have also been shortcomings on the part of the European Union."
Six Western Balkan countries want to join the EU – Albania, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo – but are at different stages of the accession process.
Montenegro, with a population of just 630,000, is widely considered the frontrunner and would be relatively easy to absorb into the EU, a bloc of 450 million people.
But even Montenegro faces obstacles, including related to justice and corruption, and many see its goal of joining by 2028 as very ambitious.
On the eve of the summit, Germany and France proposed giving aspiring EU members more opportunities to join EU programmes and access the single market before joining the bloc.
Merz last month also suggested Ukraine could be granted a new status of “associate member” that would allow Ukrainian officials to take part in EU summits and ministerial meetings – but not vote in them – as an interim step towards full membership.
(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac and Andreas Rinke; Writing by Andrew Gray; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
