Croatia’s President Zoran Milanović said on May 29 that no new members would join the European Union, apart from perhaps Montenegro, and warned that aspiring countries were being misled with empty promises.

Speaking to students at the University of the North in Koprivnica, Milanović described EU enlargement pledges as “false promises” made to extract political concessions, particularly in alignment against Moscow, according to the speech that was widely quoted by local media. He said Georgia, despite strong economic growth, would face a similar fate.

Milanovic’s words appeared to dismiss expectations that Albania, which has recently emerged as one of the frontrunners in the EU accession process, could join the bloc by the end of this decade. 

European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said in March that Albania and Montenegro could finalise EU accession negotiations by 2026 or 2027. 

Fellow political leaders from Croatia, Slovenia and EU members in the broader Central and Southeast Europe region have been pushing for enlargement to the Western Balkans. They include Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, Milanovic’s main political rival.

Despite the 2003 Thessaloniki summit promise of eventual membership for the region, none of the six Western Balkan candidates – Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro – have yet joined.

While Albania and Montenegro are making progress towards accession, Serbia has struggled to make headway. While Serbia has been an official EU candidate since 2012, it has not opened a single negotiation chapter since 2021. Belgrade has also been criticised by EU officials for failing to align with Western sanctions on Russia. 

Meanwhile, North Macedonia’s progress has been stalled by bilateral disputes with first Greece and more recently Bulgaria.

As well as his comments on enlargement, the Croatian president also had broader criticism for the European Union. “Europe is no longer the force it once was,” Milanović said, adding that the continent had ceded global leadership in innovation and market influence to the United States and China. “Europe goes to China and lectures on human rights, instead of talking about the sales of European cars, whose sales are in significant decline.”

On the war in Ukraine, Milanović characterised the conflict as one of attrition rather than the positional warfare of World War I, attributing its outbreak to Western insistence that every country choose its own military alliances and thereby alienating Kyiv from Moscow.

Milanovic has repeatedly clashed with Plenkovic and other members of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-led government over Zagreb’s support for Ukraine. He has opposed the government’s strong backing of Kyiv, a position that has placed him at odds with Croatia’s Western allies.

He also criticised US policy towards Israel, arguing that American “unconditional support” for the regime, rather than its people, had fuelled what he termed terrorism against Palestinians. “The white man needs to realise as soon as possible that he is not the centre of the world and that we will all be better off,” he said, quipping that no coup has ever occurred in the United States because “there is no American embassy there”.