Page 45 - bne Magazine February 2023

bne February 2023 OUTLOOK 2023 I 45
This has damaged Serbia’s standing with the West and led to calls from MEPs and other European politicians for Serbia’s EU accession process to be frozen. Moving into 2023 there seems no immediate prospect of a change of stance by Belgrade; such a step would be highly difficult politically given the loud pro-Russian voices within Serbia.
Moldova has long had a highly polarised political landscape. The landslide victories of President Maia Sandu and her Party of Action and Solidarity, in 2020 and 2021 respectively, looked set to propel the small country on a Western course. However, despite notable steps such as securing EU candidate status, Sandu’s promised reforms have foundered amid the country’s pressing economic problems.
The window for Sandu and her PAS to make long-lasting reforms on issues such as corruption and the rule of law is closing as elections loom in 2024 and 2025 that may see the return to power of the pro-Russian Socialists or parties tarnished by corruption such as the Democratic
“Orientation vis a vis Russia and the West also emerged as a new rift in Bulgarian politics ahead of the October 2022 general election”
Party or Shor Party. 2023 will be critical in this regard. The PAS’ government is already under heavy pressure from regular mass anti-government protests organised by the Shor Party.
Power vacuums
Orientation vis a vis Russia and the West also emerged as a new rift in Bulgarian politics ahead of the October 2022 general election. This delivered a fragmented new parliament and the loose alliance that had previously been working to tackle corruption — the reformist Change Continues and Democratic Bulgaria together with the Bulgarian Socialist Party and President Rumen Radev — collapsed, with the former firmly in the Western camp and the latter two taking a more pro-Russian tack.
Three months on from the general election there is little hope of a new government being formed — much less
a reform-oriented one with the will and political capital to tackle corruption — and yet another snap election is expected in March.
A third country in political disarray is Montenegro, where efforts by a coalition of around 20 small parties to install
a government under Demos leader Miodrag Lekic fell through in January. This followed a lengthy standoff with President Milo Djukanovic, who refused to give a mandate to Lekic. Early elections are now anticipated in March.
Progress on EU enlargement
EU enlargement is the common goal of the Western Balkan countries. With the war in Ukraine giving EU members a prod to embrace European countries outside the bloc, 2022 saw some of the biggest progress on enlargement in recent years. Not only did Albania and North Macedonia get the long-awaited nod to
start accession talks, but EU members also extended candidate status to Bosnia, Moldova and Ukraine.
At the start of 2023, Croatia was admitted into both the Eurozone and the Schengen area, overtaking Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU six years earlier. Romania in particular plans to make a concerted effort to secure Schengen membership in 2023.
Overall, however, less action on EU integration is expected in 2023. North Macedonia’s government now has the politically difficult ask of getting unpopular constitutional amendments through Parliament for the country to progress with its accession talks. Meanwhile, of the two frontrunners in the process, Serbia’s progress appears stymied by its refusal to fall into line with EU foreign policy on Russia, and Montenegro’s by its political instability.
Romania had a relatively calm year politically, but 2023
is expected see the emergence of cracks in the grand coalition between the country’s two largest parties, the National Liberal Party (PNL) and Social Democratic Party (PSD). The first challenge will be the handover of the prime minister position from the PNL to the PSD. After that, as the super-election year of 2024 approaches, the two parties can be expected to assert their differences as they art to woo the electorate.
Economic crisis
All this is happening against the backdrop of the economic crisis caused by the war in Ukraine and related sanctions. The final months of the year saw the start of a slowdown as rampant inflation took its toll on companies and households.
For most of the region, growth continued relatively robustly in 2022, albeit slower than during the rebound from the coronacrisis in 2021. Three small Southeast European economies — Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia — appear to have clocked up some of the fastest growth in the Emerging Europe area in 2022, helped by the recovery of international tourism, even though by the end of the year their expansion had started to slow.
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