Two decades of economic integration between the Western Balkans and the EU have delivered meaningful gains, including the elimination of tariffs, growing foreign direct investment and deepening participation in European manufacturing supply chains. Building on this foundation, this paper examines what it would take to go further. It identifies the key remaining obstacles – non-tariff barriers such as sanitary, phytosanitary and technical regulations, inefficient border infrastructure, and a new wave of EU regulatory requirements including the carbon border adjustment mechanism and corporate sustainability directives – and assesses how much these cost firms in practice.

The paper finds that existing frameworks, including Stabilization and Association Agreements and the New Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, do not yet offer a clear or sufficient path to removing these barriers ahead of full EU membership. A more flexible and targeted approach is needed, one that accounts for the different positions of individual Western Balkan economies, and that couples stronger regulatory alignment support with investment in border efficiency and cross-border infrastructure.