Updated:
Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger says the reforms required for Western Balkan countries to join the EU are a “complicated” and “bureaucratic” process.
Austria is proposing a new approach: granting candidate countries access to the EU Single Market as they implement reforms, rather than making them wait until full membership. This would allow them to see the “effects of the reforms immediately”.
Meinl-Reisinger describes enlargement as the EU’s “most powerful and important geostrategic instrument”, arguing that it is key to countering Russian and Chinese influence in the region.