A year ago, the European Union told two Balkan countries they could get the green light this month to start membership talks if they jumped through the right hoops.

The European Commission says both countries, North Macedonia and Albania, have done just that. But neither will get the go-ahead at a meeting of EU ministers next week, thanks above all to France and Germany. Paris is the leading skeptic when it comes to enlarging the EU while Berlin can't make a decision because the German parliament has yet to take a view.

The failure to reach agreement on inviting the two countries to begin talks has infuriated some other EU members and European Commission officials. They argue that delaying a decision undermines the bloc's credibility, puts the pro-EU governments of both countries in peril and risks boosting strategic rivals in the region such as Russia, China and Turkey.

Opponents of starting talks cite the western Balkans' deep-seated problems with corruption, organized crime and poverty and its recent history of conflict. Some officials also say that populist parties in Western Europe would seize on any move to bring the two Balkan countries closer to the bloc to whip up anti-EU feeling.

Diplomats say this Tuesday's meeting of the EU's General Affairs Council in Luxembourg will likely push a decision until later in the year — possibly to September or October. Some suggest at least North Macedonia may get the go-ahead at that stage while the prospects for Albania appear more uncertain.

EU diplomats are now in the midst of tortuous efforts to agree a text that will strike a balance between the views of the bloc's 28 members and still offer hope to Skopje and Tirana that they may get the thumbs-up later this year.

For the past year, the governments of both North Macedonia and Albania have been pinning their hopes on this Tuesday's gathering in Luxembourg.

One senior EU diplomat described the talks as "agitated," underscoring how the western Balkans, a small patch of the Continent, evokes outsize emotions among EU member countries, more than two decades after the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart and also brought tensions between Western European capitals to the fore.

In a sign of just how sensitive the issue is, France and Germany even proposed that the phrase "the Council welcomes" the Commission's recommendation to start membership talks be downgraded to the more neutral “the Council takes note” in the draft text, according to another diplomat, who was in the room during the discussions.

Leaders in Skopje and Tirana — and their supporters inside the EU — worry that much could happen between now and the next deadline to scupper their chances. That could include anything from further political instability in Albania, where the president and government are at loggerheads over his attempts to cancel local elections due to an opposition boycott, to the fall of Germany's struggling coalition government.

"Our target is to start talks before the end of the year, whether the decision is taken before or after the summer," said North Macedonia's Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov. "The sooner the decision is taken, the less risk we all take."

Looking to Luxembourg

For the past year, the governments of both North Macedonia and Albania have been pinning their hopes on this Tuesday's gathering in Luxembourg. At the equivalent meeting last year, the EU set out "the path towards opening accession negotiations in June 2019" for the two countries — but without clearly committing to a positive outcome.

Membership talks would in any case last for years, with no guarantee that a candidate country would eventually join the bloc. But even last year's decision was highly contentious. France, backed by the Netherlands, blocked the start of membership talks and ministers argued for hours over the final text of their conclusions. The two candidate countries were urged to make progress on improving democratic standards and the rule of law to get the green light in a year's time.

The European Commission reported late last month that both countries had kept their end of the bargain. North Macedonia even changed its name (from Macedonia) as part of a deal to end a long-running dispute with Greece.

But the Commission's annual assessment was published about a month and a half later than last year — at the insistence of France, which wanted to avoid the issue getting caught up in the European election campaign, according to diplomats. German members of parliament said that did not give them enough time to reach a decision before next week's meeting.

Gunther Krichbaum, the chairman of the Bundestag's EU affairs committee, branded France's move "regrettable."

"We need sufficient time to discuss the progress reports, to compare them with reports from other institutions and to produce our own evaluation," he said in a statement to POLITICO. "We didn't have this time due to the late publication of the reports."

Krichbaum said North Macedonia should not be too concerned as "everything points towards starting accession negotiations this year."

Another senior German conservative said MPs asked for more time to consider the issues and didn’t want to be “pushed into” a decision. In addition, the current political turbulence in Albania has complicated matters by putting the option of "decoupling" North Macedonia’s application from Albania’s on the table, the MP said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Any decision to open talks does not rest with Juncker. It lies with member states and requires unanimous backing to pass.

Germany's foreign ministry said this week it supports membership talks for both Albania and North Macedonia. But France has been noncommittal — despite a plea this week from 13 other EU countries, including Austria, Italy and Poland, for talks to begin this month.

French President Emmanuel Macron has argued that the EU should not contemplate enlargement until it has deepened integration among its existing members and reformed unwieldy procedures for making decisions.

In discussions about the text to be issued after next Tuesday's meeting, France has been arguing for "a general reference in the introduction part that the EU should reform itself before any enlargement," said a third EU diplomat, who complained that Paris has not made clear which particular reforms it wants.

"Take my bet, it's going to be North Macedonia only but in September or October," said another diplomat.

With "decoupling" becoming a Brussels buzzword, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama visited the EU capital on Tuesday this week to press his country's case. "I think that it's time for Europe to do what we expect after having delivered," he said after meeting European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Despite the EU's pledge from a year ago, that decision (to open talks) won't happen next week.

Juncker declared "Albania is ready for the next step."

He said the European Union would appear "as a weak body on this Continent" if it asks a country to meet various conditions and then does not follow through on its own commitments.

"If this country is delivering, we have no right to say no to the European aspirations of this country," Juncker said.

But any decision to open talks does not rest with Juncker. It lies with member states and requires unanimous backing to pass. Despite the EU's pledge from a year ago, that decision won't happen next week. And Skopje and Tirana face a nervous wait to discover when — if ever — it will finally come.

Judith Mischke and Matthew Karnitschnig contributed reporting from Berlin.