Agenda

Resilient Democracies, Safer Region

Lead: KCSS · Co-Lead: BCSP

Mentor Vrajolli · Gorana Pebic

Security in the Western Balkans is no longer mainly about hard security or open disputes. Weak institutions, disinformation, and low public trust have themselves become security risks, and external actors mostly exploit these weaknesses rather than create them. Democratic resilience is therefore a security question, not a side issue or a mere accession condition. Yet the region’s core problem is not a shortage of commitments but a persistent implementation gap – too little follow-up, ownership, monitoring, and consequence. This session moves from that diagnosis to the practical mechanisms that can close it: a democratic-resilience stock take, minimum election safeguards before the next cycle, shared-interest cooperation on cyber, energy, and critical infrastructure, and a route into EU security tools before membership. It does so while staying realistic about the Berlin Process itself: it cannot replace accession, settle bilateral disputes, or fix domestic politics but it can keep the hard questions in view, convene leaders when other channels are blocked, and turn “the region as a contributor to European security” from a stated ambition into named mechanisms.

Facilitator: Mentor Vrajolli, Executive Director (KCSS)

Framer: Dimitar Bechev, Senior Fellow (Carnegie Europe)

Inner circle

• Xhelal Svecla, Minister of Internal Affairs
• Odeta Barbullushi, Resident Professor (College of Europe)

• Ana Krstinovska, Executive Director (ESTIMA) & Research Fellow (ELIAMEP – thinknea initiative)
• Danilo Kalezic, Senior Research Fellow (University of Montenegro)

Beyond Compliance – Digital Sovereignty before Membership

Lead: Zasto Ne · Co-Lead: CDT

Darko Brkan · Milica Kovacevic

Digital transformation has become one of the defining tests of the Western Balkans’ European integration: for small candidate countries, digital sovereignty is not technological self-sufficiency or control of the national digital space, but the capacity to align with European frameworks while getting inside the concrete mechanisms that enforce and support them: the European Digital Media Observatory and the new European Centre for Democratic Resilience, already open to candidate countries under the broader European Democracy Shield, before rather than after membership. But alignment on paper is only the starting point. The region transposes EU laws faster than it builds the institutions, independent oversight, coordination and capacity to make them real – leaving non-transparent risk assessments, lack of civil-society involvement, and reforms at times overlook human-rights and democratic safeguards. Meanwhile, AI is already reshaping elections, public services and the whole information space ahead of any of those safeguards, with women in public life among the first targets of AI-enabled harassment and manipulated content. This session looks at what it takes to build that capacity, the institutions, oversight, coordination, and literacy behind the laws, not only to adopt them. Democratic resilience runs across the wider programme, connecting this discussion to related sessions on security and geopolitics and on civic space and democratization.

Facilitator: Milica Kovacevic, Program Director (CDT)

Framer: Maida Culahovic, Policy and Advocacy Coordinator (Zasto Ne)

Inner circle

• Sanja Kekic, President (Women4Cyber)
• Erand Elmazi (Directorate of Compliance, Risk Analysis and Control, National Cyber Security Authority)
• Tjasa Feher, EU Advocacy Manager (CRTA EU)
• Maja Calovic, Digital Media Expert (Mediacentar Sarajevo)

Safeguarding Civic Space and Democracy: From Commitments to Conditionality for a Credible EU Enlargement Process

Lead: Partners Albania · Co-Lead: TI BiH

Klotilda Kosta · Edo Kanlic

Civic space across the Western Balkans is narrowing on every front at once – restrictive and “foreign agent”-style NGO laws, SLAPPs against journalists and watchdogs, surveillance, captured or financially fragile independent media, and coordinated anti-gender movements targeting women and LGBTIQ+ communities. But the narrowing of civic space is not the whole picture. It is happening inside a wider pattern of democratic backsliding, performative reforms that only satisfy formal benchmarks, weakened accountability mechanisms, and contested election integrity across several countries. The two are inseparable: civic space does not shrink in healthy democracies.

Two priorities follow. The first is that protection of civic space and democratic standards should become binding conditions in the enlargement process, not declaratory aspirations. The second is structural: civil society’s engagement in decision-making be meaningful rather than formal.

Facilitator: Klotilda Kosta, Director of Programmes (Partners Albania)

Framer: Ionut Sibian, Vice-President of the External Relations Section (EESC)

Inner circle

• Milorad Bjeletic, General Director (Belgrade Open School)
• Dren Puka, Executive Director (KCSF)
• Leila Bicakcic, Executive Director (CIN)
• Nenad Koprivica, Policy Expert (CEDEM)

From Commitments to Delivery: Accelerating the Green & Sustainable Transition in the Western Balkans

Lead: IPECC · Co-Lead: Milieukontakt Albania

Liljana Dinev · Valbona Mazreku

Every Western Balkans government has signed the Green Agenda, the Sofia Declaration, and the Energy Community Treaty. However, the region is lagging on delivery despite these commitments: the obstacle is no longer policy but implementation, with institutions, especially at the local level, lacking the expertise, staff, and finance to turn commitments into outcomes, and progress held back by fragmented governance, weak enforcement, limited political will, and inadequate accountability. Two issues have become the key concerns for governments and civil society alike. First, coal phase-out is the least-defined and most politically sensitive piece of the whole agenda – governments accept the need but cannot yet answer what replaces the capacity, who finances it, and what happens to coal regions, workers and households who depend on them. Second, CBAM is proving to be a competitiveness threat before the region is ready – and the WB governments themselves argue its timelines are unrealistic given how uneven the starting point is across the region. The session asks how to shift the Berlin Process from commitment-collecting to implementation, and how to ensure the transition is a just one – women and young people remain underrepresented in energy and environmental decision-making despite being hit hardest by climate change, energy poverty, and the labor disruption a coal exit brings.

Facilitator: Liljana Dinev, Environmental Specialist (IPECC)

Framer: Nora Latifi Jashari, Programme Manager (GAP Institute)

Inner circle

• Getoar Mjeku, Deputy Minister of Economy
• Emil Balavac, Canton Minister of Trade, Tourism and Environmental Protection
• Valbona Mazreku, Executive Director (Mileukontakt)
• Mirza Kusljugic, President of the Assembly (The RESET Center Sarajevo)

Competitiveness & Growth: From CRM to Single Market

Co-Lead: IA · Co-Lead: Riinvest

Marko Sosic · Alban Hashani

Since the Draghi and Letta reports set out the depth of Europe’s competitiveness crisis, the EU has been steadily redefining the Single Market as an instrument of strategic autonomy and looking outward towards friends to consolidate its value chains. Preparing the Western Balkan Six for the Single Market, and ensuring accelerated convergence to the European standards was the rationale behind the introduction of the Growth Plan. Two years later, despite strong commitments and measurable actions, the partners have proven weak on delivery of reforms and the main question remains: whether the region can live up to its potential to complement Europe’s needs in an evolving industrial ecosystem.

Moderator: Alban Hashani, Executive Director (Thematic Co-Lead, Riinvest)

• Pranvera Kastrati, Director (CEFTA Secretariat)
• Amer Kapetanovic, Secretary General (RCC)
• Talis Linkaits, Director (Permanent Secretariat of the Transport Community)
• Lorena Sekiraqa, Political Advisor to the Prime Minister and Sherpa for Regional Affairs
• Branimir Jovanovic, Economist (wiiw)

Enlargement by Design: The Mechanisms of Getting It Right

Lead: CEP · Co-Lead: EPI

Strahinja Subotic · Stefan Ristovski

Gradual integration is the way forward, but only if it becomes a strategic political instrument rather than a procedural exercise that hardens into an indefinite “intermediate status.” This session moves past endorsing the principle to the mechanics that would make it credible: how staged integration can deliver visible mutual benefits and better prepare candidates for membership, and how innovative post-accession safeguards can protect the Union’s order and secure confidence in further rounds of enlargement. Pursued in isolation or bolted on as new procedural layers, these measures risk turning an already protracted process into “stuck integration”; pursued together as a single political strategy, they tie enlargement to the EU’s strategic objectives and a credible membership endpoint.

Facilitator: Stefan Ristovski, Senior Researcher (Thematic Co-Lead, EPI)

Framer: Milan Nic, Senior Research Fellow, German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)

Inner Circle

• Donika Emini, Political Scientist (BIEPAG)
• Valeska Esch, Visiting Fellow, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)
• Strahinja Subotic, Programme Manager and Senior Researcher, European Policy Centre (CEP-Belgrade)