The EU must show the Balkans they still have a chance of joining

SQUINT, and you can just make it out. In a quiet suburb of Belgrade, a small European Union flag flutters from the seventh floor of a concrete tower block. Almost 20 years ago, during the dark days of Slobodan Milosevic, an engineer-turned-journalist called Zoran Cvijic hung the standard from his balcony to express his hope that Serbia might one day join the club whose values he so admired. Soon afterwards NATO jets pounded Belgrade to halt Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. Gordana, Cvijic’s wife, feared the flag would bring the family unwelcome attention, yet it stayed in place. Cvijic died in 2015, still optimistic that his country would eventually take its seat at the EU table.

In 2003 the Balkan countries were told that their future lay inside the EU. Yet these days the hopes of Serbia and five other aspirants—Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro—are as faded as the yellow stars on Cvijic’s flag. Weary of the endless rows that pass for politics in the Balkans, and burned by what looks like the premature accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, the Europeans have little appetite to expand their club further, especially as Brexit obliges them to manage its contraction. In 2014 Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said there would be no enlargement during his five-year term, a pointless gesture that weakened the hands of Balkan reformers. Today, just 43% of Serbs say they want to join the EU, down from 67% in 2009. Young people are notably hostile.