Italy and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans: the Europeanization of national interests?

Abstract

Italy is a vocal supporter of EU enlargement to the Western Balkans. Relying on primary and secondary sources and semi-structured interviews, this article analyses Italy’s position, including the ‘what?’ (the traditional views of the country on EU enlargement), the ‘how?’ (formal processes and actual practices of decision-making) and the ‘why?’ (the main factors influencing its position). The expected economic and security benefits for Rome largely compensate for the perceived costs of EU enlargement towards the region. Nevertheless, Italy’s influence capacity is hampered by lack of resources and a traditional focus on mere diplomatic presence, as it emerges from the recent examples of the Berlin Process, the refugee crisis, and the EUSAIR.

Keywords:

• Foreign policy
• Italy
• Western Balkans
• enlargement
• European Union
• Berlin Process
• EUSAIR

Notes

1. From 2012 to 2016, the Italian Guardia di Finanza cooperated with the Albanian police, providing reconnaissance flights to identify drug cultivations to be destroyed. The 2015 Albanian law on ‘de-criminalisation’, aimed at removing individuals with a criminal track record from public office, was based on the model of the Italian Law 190/2012 (‘Legge Severino’).

2. In 2016, Italy noted, together with the European Commission, how Albania was being requested to demonstrate a ‘solid track record’ in investigations and prosecutions of high-level corruption cases in order to be granted a date for the start of accession negotiations, while the already-negotiating Montenegro only had to provide an ‘initial track record’ as an interim benchmark for Chapters 23 and 24.

3. The topic of EU enlargement is included in the Annual Programmatic Report (Relazione Programmatica) on Italy’s participation in the EU, presented by the Government to the Parliament. In 2016, only two pages over 183 were dedicated to EU enlargement (Office of the Prime Minister of Italy 2015, 105–6).

4. See the parliamentary debate on the Government’s annual Programmatic Report on Italy’s participation in the EU, and the following Parliamentary Resolution, e.g., No. 6/155 of 10 September 2015 (Italian Chamber of Deputies 2015). The topic of EU enlargement is relegated to the very last line of the Resolution, which states: ‘for what concerns the EU enlargement strategy towards the Balkans, it is necessary to support the implementation of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region’ (EUSAIR).

5. Anti-enlargement statements have been made, for instance, by the Northern League MEP Lorenzo Fontana on Albania (Party of the Northern League 2015). At the same time, the MEPs of the ‘Five-Star Movement’/‘Movimento Cinque Stelle’ (M5S) party have so far refrained from taking an enlargement-sceptic stance, despite the strong opposition to it by its British UKIP colleagues in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) Group. Such stances have been expressed, for instance, by the M5S MEPs Fabio Massimo Castaldo and Ignazio Corrao (European Parliament 2016a, 2016b).

6. In particular, the debate on the environmental impact of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) evolved into a political confrontation between the Puglia’s regional authorities and the Italian Government.

7. Italy reportedly maintained full impartiality, as in line with its Chairmanship duties, by declining a proposal to join a restricted diplomatic format of Member States, the so-called Friends of Macedonia/FYROM, which (unsuccessfully) attempted to put pressure on Greece in order to unblock the bilateral dispute.

8. In 2015, Italy deployed around 550 military and civilian personnel in CSDP and NATO missions and operations in the Balkans (Italian Ministry of Defence 2015).

9. The EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (EUSAIR) was formally adopted by the General Affairs Council in October 2014 to advance transnational collaboration between four EU Member States (Croatia, Greece, Italy and Slovenia) and four non-EU Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia) in four multi-level clusters: Blue Growth, Connecting the Region, Environmental Quality and Sustainable Tourism (European Commission 2014).

10. On 1 January 2015, Italy hosted 490,483 Albanian citizens (the second biggest group after Romanians, with 9.8% of the total foreign presences), as well as 77,703 Macedonians, 45,836 Kosovars, 43,811 Serbians and 29,080 Bosnian-Herzegovinians (Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policy 2016).

11. The first Conference on the Balkans was held in Berlin in July 2014 and involved Germany, France, Austria, the European Commission and the Foreign Ministers of the six non-EU Western Balkan countries (German Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2014).

12. The Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni attended the 2015 Vienna conference, but did not deliver any speech outlining the official position of the Italian Government, while Italy’s contribution in the 2016 Paris Western Balkans Summit was not substantial.