EU enlargement is the bloc’s “most powerful” geostrategic instrument, says Austrian Foreign Minister

Europe is facing a strategic choice over its future borders. With Ukraine, Moldova and the Western Balkans pressing for EU membership, enlargement is back at the heart of the European debate. Austria is proposing a new approach, giving candidate countries access to the single market as they complete reforms, rather than making them wait for full membership. But does that accelerate enlargement or risk creating a permanent halfway house? Yesterday I had a a chance to speak to Austria's Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger to discuss her proposal. And I started by asking her why the enlargement process is moving so slowly. Is it because the candidate countries are lacking reforms or because of political reluctance inside the EU itself? Here's what she said. There are so many countries now in the waiting room for or have been in the waiting room for over 20 years, especially those countries from the Western Balkans. And you know that Austria is a fierce promoter of Western Balkan accession. I think it's both. First, it's a very complicated and bureaucratic process, and it's hard to do reforms, to reform everything in your country, which is what we ask from these states. But on the other hand, it's also a little bit, well, not only political reluctance, but also bureaucratic reluctance of Brussels not being able to promote ideas like this gradual integration, this step-by-step membership as we introduced now into the discussion. On that point, Austria has proposed to give EU candidates access to parts of the single market before they become members. Isn't this essentially EU membership à la carte? No, it's not à la carte because this is not a membership only in a single point. And that's it then. The target, the goal is always full membership. But what we have seen now over the last two decades is that those exceeding countries, they do reforms in some countries on a faster pace and some a little bit more slowly, but they do reforms. But it has been always everything or nothing. So, if you do all the reforms, you get eventually the full membership. And now this idea of step-by-step membership, it's a development out of our gradual integration approach, means that if you do reforms in a respective area, you can enter the single market there. So, it's not like, I don't know, an elevator you take. It's not getting any faster, but you see the effects of the reforms immediately. Now, there are fewer than half of Austrians who currently support EU enlargement. Why should Austrian taxpayers and voters see another enlargement as being in their interest? Well, actually, that is our communication job. And I see the numbers as well. And I'm a little bit wondering what has been the communication over the last two decades, because Austria is among the top investors in nearly all exceeding countries, especially in the Western Balkans, but also take, for example, Ukraine. I think Austria has been the sixth largest investor there. More than 200 companies are already there. With every enlargement round we made, after Austria was a full member of the European Union, And we saw that Austria benefited enormously so that wealth in our own country and jobs have been created. Now, finally, if the EU doesn't offer the Western Balkans a credible path to membership now, are we effectively handing the region to Russia and China? Yes, we are. I always say there is no such thing as a vacuum in EU politics. And the enlargement is the most powerful and important strategic instrument the European Union has. So it is primarily, in my opinion, a political decision to be taken that we say, no, this is our backyard. We want the countries of the Western Balkans. We want also Ukraine, Moldova be part of the European Union. union but apart from that we are and not only an internal market we are also a union created out of values so they have to do the reforms but we have to find possibilities how to make it much quicker than in the past once again for western balkan countries there has been more than two decades and we're losing the population there and if the population is is getting frustrated It's very easy for Russia or China or the U.S. to enter those countries.