EU Accession of Western Balkan States: The Role of CEFTA and WTO Membership

The Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) is known to have positively affected the EU accession of several central and eastern European states. The fairly modest progress of EU accessions of Western Balkan states is in stark contrast to the processes of the EU accession of the parties to the original version of CEFTA. This article analyses the role of WTO membership as an external factor determining the efficacy of CEFTA in advancing the process of EU integration in the Western Balkans (2007–2024). The article identifies two key advantages of WTO membership in the context of CEFTA’s role in the process of EU accession. The first advantage is related to the use of WTO dispute settlement to ensure compliance with standards either identical or similar to those established by CEFTA. The second advantage is based on the relatively new WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), aimed at eliminating many of the barriers to international trade, which happen to be the key problems as regards regional economic integration in the Western Balkans. The article concludes that WTO membership could play a decisive role for the coordinated and efficient process of the European integration of Western Balkan states on the basis of CEFTA.