On the Glacial Pace of E.U. Accession for Serbia and Albania

With Russian troops having been in Ukraine for over four years by March, 2026, the case was indeed being made then for the E.U. enlarging as much and as soon as possible by adding new states, including Ukraine. For in addition to making it more difficult for Russia to invade countries in Eastern Europe by turning them into E.U. states, the main way that a federal union, whether the E.U. or U.S., expands is by the accession of new states from what had been sovereign countries. This is why Canada would enter the U.S. as a state, or, more likely, a few states, rather than in a merge. Especially with the Russians having been dropping bombs on Ukrainian people and infrastructure for years, giving up some governmental sovereignty was arguably not too high a price for state governments to accept.  

In a public effort to push the accession process along for their respective future states, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama published an op-ed in a European newspaper to propose “functional partial integration serving as an intermediate step to revive the EU enlargement process and increase stability in the region.”[1] In other words, Serbia and Albania would at some point get some but not all of the rights that go along with E.U. statehood. The single market and the Schengen area would be granted as the intermediate step, while no decision-making power would be extended at the federal level either for the governments of Serbia and Albania (in the European Council and the Council of Ministers) or for Serbians and Albanians in having elected representatives in the European Parliament. The “trial balloon” of giving Ukraine a similar intermediate limbo-state had popped rather loudly at an E.U. summit, so it would seem to follow that the proposal by the Serbia and Albanian leaders would be dead on arrival at the European Council.

The frustration with the enlargement process in general was certainly palpable by 2026 and could explain the desperate attempt of Serbia and Albania to get  at least one foot into the E.U. sooner rather than later. Thanks in large part to Hungary’s ongoing veto of Ukraine’s accession process from being formally carried out, obstacles to enlargement were getting a lot of press in early 2026. In 2025, an E.U. report on enlargement “highlighted Belgrade’s lack of alignment” with the E.U.’s sanctions against Russia for having unjustifiably invaded Ukraine.[2] Serbia’s lack of reform for media freedom, electoral law, and civil society had also been responsible for the stall in talks. As for Albania, although it was considered “one of the most promising candidates for EU accession,” corruption remained stubbornly entrenched. It would be interesting to compare that corruption with that which was in Ukraine at the time. The question of whether geo-political urgency should relegate concerns about corruption has no easy answer except perhaps in lopping off the extremes. To be sure, Albania had introduced the anti-corruption authority SPAK, but the more interesting question is perhaps whether the Ukrainian government did likewise in a way that leaves a viable record of less corruption.

In general, the “accession process for Serbia and other Western Balkan countries (had) stalled for years, as candidate countries (had not) made sufficient process on rule of law, anti-corruption measures, media freedom and judicial reforms. . .”[3] With the NATO defensive umbrella in place, except for Ukraine, the urgency pertaining to the rest of the candidates was not sufficient, I submit, to justify not finishing the job on rule of law, anti-corruption, media freedom and judicial reforms because all of these are very important to a civil society and a republic on an ongoing basis. Granting some candidate countries some intermediate rights could be expected to reduce the incentive of those state governments to continue to come into alignment with the E.U.’s expectations prior to statehood being fully granted.

Regarding the glacial pace of enlargement generally, a silver-lining to that dark cloud can be seen in that something had to be done about the stultifying impact of the principle of unanimity in the European Council before gaining even more states would make reaching unanimity even more difficult that it was for 27 states. Put another way, making sure that the candidate states made the requisite reforms not only would render the E.U. more solidly democratic and based on the rule of law and freedom (e.g., of the press), but would also give the E.U. more time to reform its internal decision-making process where unanimity was still required for federal law and foreign (and defense) policy to be enacted and promulgated, respectively. Not everything that seems weak in the E.U. is actually weakness, though admittedly requiring unanimity from 27 governments can be coined an exercise in futility in service to the absurd.

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1. Zara Riffler, “Serbia and Albania Issue Joint Text on EU Accession without Veto,” Euronews.com, 11 March, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Columbia: The United States of South America?

On March 8, 2026, The Associated Press reported on the voting in Columbia that took place that day “for a new Congress and to select candidates . . . in a primary-style contest ahead of a presidential election in May.”[1] This description could hardly be more “American,” in the sense of referring to the United States. I contend that this allusion to the U.S. is overdrawn. Were Columbia to apply for membership in the U.S., the accession would pertain to becoming a state, rather than to Columbia as a United States of South America merging with the other United States. Put another way, even though Columbia appropriated from the federal level of the U.S. in creating a presidency, a Congress that in turn consists of “The Senate” and “The House of Representatives,” and a presidential election process that includes something akin to primaries, Columbia corresponds to the American states (only without being members of a union as they are) rather than to the United States. Columbia’s accession into the U.S. as a state would not instantiate an empire within an empire.

One way of distinguishing Columbian politics from politics at the national level in the U.S. is to point out that the timespan for presidential campaigning in Columbia in 2026 between the “primaries” and the presidential general election was just months. Whereas that is plenty of time to campaign across Columbia, much more time is needed for U.S. presidential candidates to campaign in 50 states. Accordingly, the U.S. presidential campaign “season” is much longer—with the primaries themselves taking place over about 6 months. This is a great way to grasp the qualitative leap (i.e., rather than being a matter of degree) that separates and distinguishes a state from a union that is composed of many such states. Although only a few months are between the nominating political conventions and the general presidential election in the U.S., and only a few months are between the Columbian “primaries” and that presidential election, the American presidential campaign “season” is significantly front-loaded in part because the U.S. is an empire-scale federal system wherein the states play a role in the election of the federal president and thus should at least theoretically be campaigned in. It is not enough to campaign in an area the size of Columbia, for example.

Shifting from process to institutional analysis, Columbia’s system of government as unitary can be distinguished from the U.S.’s federal system. Although imitation has been said to be the highest form of flattery, referring to Columbia’s upper and lower legislative chambers as together being a Congress is misleading. In the United Colonies, which predates the United States, the Continental Congress was so named because it was viewed as international meetings rather than as a domestic legislature. So too, the Congress during the Articles of Confederation was understood to be an international body because the states were then sovereign countries. Although this changed in 1789 when the three branches of the federal government went into effect, the U.S. Senate was understood to be founded on principles of international law. Although the states were then only semi-sovereign (some governmental sovereignty having been delegated to the federal government), that polities rather than individuals would the members of the Senate and that the member-polities all would have the same number of votes meant that the U.S. Senate is an international chamber (i.e., founded on such principles, rather than national principles). The latter principles apply to the U.S. House of Representatives, so with the Senate, the Congress can be construed as a hybrid national-international institution. In utter contrast, Columbia’s Congress is solely domestic in nature—not a thread of international fiber being mixed in. This is so, too, of the legislatures of the U.S.’s member-states. So, in this way too, Columbia can be seen to correspond to a state in the U.S. rather than to the U.S. itself.

Indeed, one reason why federalism fits so well for the U.S. is because of its empire-scale and the related interstate cultural heterogeneity. Massachusetts is very different than Oklahoma, culturally speaking, and Texas is very different than Hawaii. The claim that the regions of Columbia differ culturally to such an extent is based in part on the category mistake of treating a state-scale polity as being commensurate with, or equivalent to, a union of such states.

One implication of seeing Columbia in this light is that it and its neighbors could form a United States of South America, whose Congress would be hybrid-based on international and national principles of government. The Senate of such a Congress would represent Columbia and the other states rather than individual citizens (the direct election of U.S. senators by citizens of the respective states may thus be problematic). Were such a United States of South America in existence, a federal check on power-abuses at the state level would be possible (though not guaranteed). The need for and lack of such a check when the Columbians went to vote in March, 2026 is clear from the assertion made at the time by Columbian Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez “that a group of at least 2,400 people ‘allegedly heading to vote’ were detected trying to enter Columbia at an illegal border crossing with Venezuela in Norte de Santander, despite announced border closures during the election process.”[2] Sixty buses were waiting to take the people to voting stations. Columbia’s simple rather than federal polity did not include such safeguards as would surely come from the U.S. federal government were citizens of one state sent into another state as campaign volunteers to attempt to vote there. In the words of Sánchez, an “avalanche of illegal voting” happened in Columbia on March 8, 2026.[3] Whereas claims of widespread electoral fraud in some of the U.S. states in the 2020 presidential election were met with investigations by Congress and the U.S. Justice Department, which crucially are distinct from any of the state governments, the Columbian government had only itself to investigate why busloads of foreigners allegedly voted for candidates for president even though that government may have been blameworthy. It is not as if Columbia constituted a United States of South America. Of course, political corruption can occur at virtually any scale; the U.S. Federal Government is hardly immune, and neither is the government of the tiny polity of Rhode Island, for instance.

My point is merely that even though Columbia’s legislature is called a Congress and includes a chamber called a senate, Columbia does not have the checks and balances that are built into an empire-scale federal polity such as the United States. Even if some of the U.S. states had federal systems, those states would not thereby be equivalent to the U.S., or, more generally, to an empire-scale and international-national hybrid federal government.

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1. Astrid Suarez, “Colombians Are Electing a New Congress and Choosing Presidential Candidates,” The Associated Press, March 8, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.