Guy Verhofstadt urges the EU to "keep the Western Balkans within the European fold" to prevent the region from returning to the bloody ethnic conflict of the 1990s, and pivoting to Russia and China, "as has been the trend in recent years." He says the new "Enlargement Strategy" that the European Commission plans to adopt in February, "will set a target date of 2025 for the accession of Serbia and Montenegro." This might also help Kosovo and Serbia promote confidence-building efforts and ease tensions.

The question is whether the "European-led reforms" in these new potential EU members are of long-term sustainability to qualify for membership? Shouldn't the EU learn from past lessons? The 2004 Eastern Enlargement admitted Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia into the EU. The 2007 enlargement saw the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. Today only the Baltic States can be seen as both reliable and respectable members.

In retrospect the extension of EU membership to countries like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania may have been premature. The lesson is that it takes decades for Eastern Europe and its citizens to adjust themselves to Western values. Self-determination and consumerism alone do not make people more democratic. The first bunch of politicians that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union made up of enthusiastic, pro-EU and reform-minded politicians. In recent years, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are governed by illiberal anti-EU parties.

Even after their countries gained independence following the fall of the Soviet Union, people still rally behind strong leaders. Although they don't want to be ruled by a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, they support populist leaders, as long as they are provided for. Tapping into anti-multicultural sentiments, populist, autocratic leaders in Eastern Europe defend a conservative, nationalist and nativist agenda. They milk benefits from the EU, while violating EU laws and eroding its liberal order.

In the face of the illiberal democracies in Eastern Europe, it raises doubts about admitting countries in the Western Balkans, where crime and corruption are pervasive, with judicial reforms taking the backseat.

Macedonia was spared the inter-ethnic violence that raged in the Balkans following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. but it came close to civil war a decade after independence. The country has been without a functioning government since 2015, following a wiretapping scandal that brought down the ruling nationalist party bloc. Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev and his coalition partners representing Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority. The president is wary of empowering Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, its largest minority, and thereby pose a threat to sovereignty. The country's name remains a contentious issue, because Greeks fear that its name could be linked to their northern region of Macedonia.

Montenegro emerged as a sovereign state after just over 55% of the population opted for independence in a May 2006 referendum, ending the Union of Serbia and Montenegro, which was created only three years earlier out of the remnant of the former Yugoslavia.The country is moving towards further integration with the West. A NATO membership since 2017 it aspires to join the EU. Others like Bosnia and Herzegovina face political resistance from the EU or their neighbours.

The author says, "Russia clearly has an interest in discouraging Western Balkan countries from pursuing NATO and EU membership, which is all the more reason for the EU to step up its engagement in the region." But what EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker did in his 2017 “State of the Union” address - calling for a “credible enlargement perspective” for the region, may instill unrealistic hope, that would end up in disappointment. There is little appetite within the EU for absorbing more new members just for the sake of preventing Moscow from bringing them in the Russian fold. If these countries can not get their act together, like putting their houses in order, they will only pose problems to the already crisis-ridden EU once they become members.