Viral vulnerability: How the pandemic is making democracy sick in the Western Balkans

The crisis has accentuated the countries’ existing vulnerabilities related to the rule of law and democratic governance. It has strengthened governments, weakened parliaments’ legislative and oversight functions, limited media freedom, and led to an increase in breaches of personal data protection.  

In the ECFR’s latest policy brief “Viral vulnerability: How the pandemic is making democracy sick in the Western Balkans”, authors Beáta Huszka and Tania Lessenska analyse the impact of the crisis on democratic governance and respect for human rights, particularly in relation to the use of arbitrary or unlawful restrictions on citizens, exploring how these shifts have affected the EU’s relationship with Western Balkans countries. 

Main findings: 

• The covid-19 crisis does not seem to have brought about a new political era in the Western Balkans, but rather accentuated countries’ existing vulnerabilities related to the rule of law and democratic governance.
   
• Governments in the region have often taken selective and arbitrary approaches to applying restrictions in response to the pandemic, sometimes using the measures to silence their critics and opponents.
   
• Selective and arbitrary approaches to applying measures could have the most severe long-term effects of any aspect of the crisis response. 

• They exacerbate the greatest threat to the accession process in the Western Balkans: backsliding on the EU’s political criteria.
   
• Yet the EU seems less inclined than it once was to allow Western Balkans governments to get away with democratic backsliding just because they align themselves with the bloc geopolitically 

In principle, all Western Balkans countries are committed to EU integration. However, genuine engagement with the accession process seems to be lacking everywhere but North Macedonia, the only one of them that has improved its democratic record in the last two years.  

On top of this, the authors assert, the blunders that the EU made in its aid policy – especially those in the first few months of the covid-19 crisis – showed that the bloc needs to focus more on issues of sequencing and communication, while revealing the painful disillusionment with the EU in some Western Balkans countries. 

With the next General Affairs Council meeting set for early December, Bulgaria and North Macedonia should try to reach an agreement, salvage what is left of the progress that has been made in the last three years and pave the way for the first intergovernmental conference of North Macedonia.  

About the authors 

Beáta Huszka is a visiting fellow at ECFR and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at ELIAMEP, Athens. Her current research projects focus on EU enlargement and minority rights litigation in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of the book Secessionist Movements and Ethnic Conflict. She completed her PhD at the Central European University. 

Tania Lessenska is a former ECFR Western Balkans programme coordinator, for the last three years, and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in public policy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She is the author of Finally, Some Good News.