Mapping Western Balkans States’ Progress Levels for EU Membership
Mapping Western Balkans States’ Progress Levels for EU Membership

Summary/Abstract: In this article, the European Commission’s annual country progress reports on the level of preparedness of the four Western Balkans candidate countries – Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia – are used to create a map of each country’s level of preparedness (to join the European Union). This map, figurative in nature, consists of contemporary (i.e. 2019) grades for each chapter and the overall grade for each country, as well as a comparison of the initial grades each candidate country received and their current grades, also by chapter and overall. These are juxtaposed to each other in order to ascertain how much each country improved or worsened their level of preparedness in the relevant reporting period and identify fluctuations in the level of preparedness throughout the reporting period. This comparison also aims to spur future research into the causes of the grades and the grading method, which should be able to provide practitioners with a normative framework as how to mimic best practices and achieve satisfactory level of preparedness for EU accession.

• Details
• Contents