Empowering Western Balkan Parliaments: EU Efforts to Counter Autocratisation During the Accession Process in Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia

Literature on EU enlargement highlights the weakening of parliamentary oversight in candidate states amid the accession process, identifying it as a contributing factor to autocratisation in regions such as the Western Balkans. However, the literature fails to systematically analyse the role of the EU in contributing to autocratisation in the region, despite indications of growing EU commitment to strengthening candidate parliaments. This paper will seek to understand to what extent the engagement of EU actors with national parliaments in candidate countries in the Western Balkans supports or weakens parliamentary oversight. The paper will study the role of EU actors, namely the EU Parliament, the European Commission, and EU member states, in supporting parliaments of candidate states who have experienced autocratisation, thorough capacity-building projects, by means of mediation during parliamentary boycotts, or through specific references to parliamentary deficiencies in accession progress reports. The paper will be based on the analysis of three case studies. First, the paper will analyse the case of the EU’s biggest recent parliamentary development project, INTER-PARES, through which member states’ parliaments worked with the legislature of Montenegro. Secondly, the mediation of the European Parliament amid North Macedonia’s 2014-2016 parliamentary boycott will be analysed. Finally, qualitative text analysis will be undertaken to assess how the Commission’s progress reports address the misuse of legislative procedures in Serbia. The selection of these case studies brings together perspectives from three candidate states that have recently experienced autocratisation, namely North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, and will provide intricate data regarding the role played by EU actors in addressing deficiencies (lack of administrative capacity; use of disruptive tools; misuse of parliamentary procedure) affecting the workings of parliaments from candidate countries. The paper intends to rely on data collected through interviews, parliamentary repositories, as well as primary sources, most notably EU official documents.