At the end of March 2025, the EU started disbursing the pre-financing payments foreseen under the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans. North Macedonia and Albania are underway to receive the first payment, and Serbia is to follow suit. The disbursement happened almost two years after the European Commission President announced the plans for introducing such a new instrument in her GLOBSEC speech at the end of May 2023 and one year after the agreement for the Regulation on the Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans (RGFWB) was adopted at the EU level.
The Growth Plan is an additional tool aimed at bringing the Western Balkan partners closer to the EU by offering some of the benefits of EU membership to the region in advance of accession, boosting economic growth, and accelerating socio-economic convergence. Modeling the EU’s approach of performance-based funding the RGFWB intended to bring the modalities of management of funds closer to the instruments used in the case of the member states in line with recommendations from experts and civil society.
Since the adoption of the regulation, most of the exchange between the European Commission and the governments in the Western Balkans has been focused on the structuring and adoption of the national Reform Agendas which outline the reforms that these countries are to implement in order to access segments of the funding. One year later, with the exception of Bosnia-Herzegovina, all of the countries in the region have managed to adopt and start implementing their Reform Agendas covering a variety of areas ranging from education to judicial reform. The experience of adopting the regulation on the Facility as well as the drafting of the Reform Agendas over the last two years sheds light on lessons learnt and delineates what can be expected during its implementation.
On the EU’s side, the launching of the Facility and the adoption of the Regulation were a race against time with the 2024 European Parliament elections. The Regulation on the Reform and Growth Facility was adopted shortly before the end of the parliamentary term of the previous EP composition. The sheer speed of adoption of the facility showed the capacity of the EU to act swiftly, against the expectations of many. It also showed the speed with which decisions on a policy change can be implemented if there is political will for it, which many have argued has been missing in the case of the Western Balkans. The time pressure also existed in terms of the adoption of the Reform Agendas in the region. With the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, all of the countries and governments delivered on the obligations in a relatively short time, demonstrating positive competition within the region, which is usually missing.
The swift adoption of the facility and the reform agendas also created significant challenges both in the EU and subsequently in the candidate countries. These short deadlines led to increasing political pressure for a quick adoption of the Facility itself, raising questions in the European Court of Auditors and a belated and ongoing process of impact assessment. Concerns were also expressed in the opinions of the European Economic and Social Committee, highlighting that the proposal for the RGFWB regulation lacked public consultation and an impact assessment. Similar concerns were raised in the Western Balkans, highlighting that the Reform Agendas were adopted with little information shared or consultations conducted.
The reactions from civil society as well as stakeholders outside of the government have varied, but an overall sense of insufficient process transparency persists. The result has been that the agendas, while meeting the minimum consultation requirements in the countries, have not been properly communicated to the public or broader societies. While time pressure is often understandable, it can have unintended consequences in the region’s already weak policymaking systems, which suffer from underdeveloped consultation and participation mechanisms.
This risk will also continue due to the specific time-bound performance indicators in the Reform Agendas. In a nutshell, in order to unlock a payment from the Commission, the countries need to report on their performance on the agendas as planned every six months with an additional period of 90 days for the Commission to assess the results. During this assessment, it is likely that not much information will be shared with external stakeholders, creating a potentially significant gap.
On the other hand, the fulfillment of many of the indicators and targets of the Reform Agendas will be impossible to reach without employing a whole-of-society approach, underlining the need for inclusion and partnership to achieve success. As is common with other policy documents, the consultation mechanisms include scoreboards, stakeholder inputs, and civil society engagement structures, and the devil is often in the details.
Looking at the experience of other EU processes, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility may help, but at the end of the day, all of the countries will need to establish a certain system for consultation, information and, ultimately for societal pressure for reluctant actors to deliver on the reforms. This issue becomes even more pertinent in view of the evident democratic backsliding in the region and the shrinking civic space in Europe as well.
Overall, inclusiveness in monitoring the implementation of the reform agendas should not be seen only as a means to achieve the short- and medium-term goals of the facility. Even though the European Commission, in its documents on several occasions, notes that the Reform and Growth Facility is not meant to cover all of the needs in view of the accession process, it has the potential to help rebuild trust in the EU accession process as a whole. Moreover, due to various reasons, for some countries in the region, the Reform Agendas are likely in the near future to be the key document defining the obligations towards the EU accession process. Тhe Facility and the Reform Agendas, therefore, could help spur reforms beyond their specific areas, contributing to broader systemic efforts directed towards EU membership if implemented in line with the principles of partnership.
Note: This op-ed builds upon the work of the Think for Europe Network as part of the project “Pathways to EU Integration: Advancing the dialogue on the Growth Plan for the WB” and #IGNITA initiative financed by the Open Society Foundation.