Ups and downs of enlargement process. Even though the enlargement was a priority for the German EU Presidency, no progress was reported in the negotiations on the accession of Albania and North Macedonia during the six months of German mandate. On the contrary, on January 1, when Portugal took over the EU Presidency from Germany, the expectations about enlargement were far lower than when its predecessor took this role. [1] Bulgaria blocked EU ministers’ talks on North Macedonia starting negotiations with the EU in November 2020. Nor Albania has begun its accession negotiations. These steps back are not the first symptoms of „the enlargement fatigue”, as the experts on European studies labelled it. A year earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron also rejected the formal opening of negotiations on EU membership for these two Balkan countries, sending a warning to the other aspiring candidate countries and the rest of the world that the EU has reached a critical point regarding the
enlargement process. As the UK has agreed to leave the EU, the debate about the limitations of the enlargement mechanism is all the more relevant. Brexit is the first experience for which there is still no specific concept contrary to the term enlargement. But the precedent has been set. The wave of skepticism regarding the enlargement mechanism has also increased as a result of dissatisfaction of some Western countries with illiberal regimes emerging from Poland and Hungary. At a time when the European Commission is trying to impose a rule of law mechanism for cutting funds to the governments that do not respect the rule of law, do the Balkan countries still have realistic chances of joining the EU? How the enlargement process started From a legal approach, the enlargement process was based on a principle written into the Rome treaty of March 25, 1957, Articole 237 - „any European State may apply to become a member of Community”. This…