EU leaders are set to give the political green light to open accession talks with Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday (21 March), but the outcome still hangs in the balance as several member states aim to tie the decision to progress on Ukraine and Moldova.

Last week, the European Commission gave a positive recommendation to start formal accession negotiations with Sarajevo, a decision EU leaders are expected to approve at Thursday’s summit in Brussels.

The adoption of a negotiating framework, however, is being conditioned on “once the relevant steps set out in the Commission’s recommendation of 12 October 2022 are taken”. The 2022 recommendation asked Bosnia to reinforce its democracy, state institutions and rule of law, as well as fight corruption and organised crime.

While several EU diplomats were still optimistic on Tuesday (19 March) that the language on Bosnia would be accepted, complications appeared after an EU ambassadors’ meeting on Wednesday (20 March).

For some EU member states, including Austria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia, accession progress on Ukraine and Moldova would need to go hand-in-hand with progress for the six Western Balkan countries, some of which started accession talks or became candidates more than a decade ago.

Over the past week, diplomats from those EU countries attempted to tie the two issues together.

In addition, for a small number of countries, led by the Baltics and particularly Lithuania, the language on Ukraine and Moldova did not go far enough in offering assurances that their accession bid is on track.

“Further to the submission of the draft negotiating frameworks for Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, the European Council invites the Council to take work forward,” the draft summit conclusions were to say.

However, proponents of the added language threatened to block the Bosnia decision unless there is a reference to June as a deadline for a decision on the negotiating frameworks for Ukraine and Moldova, according to two EU diplomats.

“Normally, in the past, we have taken a few months to go through the negotiating frameworks before adopting them, which is fine, but makes it unrealistic to be done by this summit,” one EU diplomat said.

“But we can’t risk that accession lies bare after June because of the upcoming Hungarian presidency,” the diplomat added. Hungary, which has been the least supportive EU country to Ukraine in the last two years, takes over the rotating EU Council presidency on 1 July.

Euractiv, however, understands that there is a reluctance to put a firm date into the EU summit conclusions.

Some fear that too much emphasis on enlargement, and the cost of support for Ukraine, could result in backlash from citizens in their countries ahead of the June EU elections, according to a third EU diplomat.

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