How do EU membership contenders stack up in opposition to the bloc?

As Brussels pushes forward with a brand new wave of enlargement, the numbers behind Europe’s commerce with its candidate nations reveal a narrative of dependence, asymmetry, but additionally a big, untapped potential.

The official EU candidates are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Kosovo is handled as a possible candidate.

Collectively, they cowl a various sweep of geography from lengthy Adriatic coastlines to lush forests and a few of Europe’s best farmland — additionally together with a few of Europe’s youngest populations.

However whereas commerce flows between the bloc and future members are booming, the connection stays unequal, with extra EU-produced items discovering a market than these stemming from potential member states.

In response to the European Fee’s 2025 Western Balkans commerce factsheet, whole commerce in items between the EU and the six Western Balkan companions reached €83.6 billion in 2024, up 28.6% since 2021.

Exports from the EU to the area stood at €49.06bn, whereas imports from the Western Balkans got here to €34.52bn, leaving Brussels with a €14.54bn commerce surplus.

The EU’s dominance as a market is overwhelming. It accounts for round 62% of all Western Balkan commerce, whereas the area represents barely 1.7% of the EU’s exterior commerce.

For Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all exports go to EU nations.

“All (candidate) nations, with the curious exception of North Macedonia, have persistent commerce deficits with the EU, which means they import extra from the EU than they export there,” defined Branimir Jovanović, an skilled with The Vienna Institute for Worldwide Financial Research (WIIW).

“These are economies with small productive sectors. They don’t produce sufficient of what they want, so that they should import, they usually additionally don’t produce sufficient to export,” Jovanović continued.

Over the previous decade, North Macedonia has turn out to be a manufacturing base for elements that go straight into EU trade that qualify for preferential entry to the EU market beneath the Stabilisation and Affiliation framework (SAA).

The result’s that North Macedonia can promote a comparatively excessive share of what it makes straight into the EU with out being blocked by technical requirements.

That is very totally different from, say, Albania, which leans extra on uncooked supplies and low-value textiles, or Montenegro, which is tourism-heavy and import-dependent in items.

It is usually totally different from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, which nonetheless import numerous higher-value equipment from the EU after which export a extra blended, lower-value basket again.

Ukraine and Moldova import high-value EU equipment, automobiles and industrial tools, whereas exporting primarily lower-margin items. In essence, they provide uncooked supplies and primary merchandise, and the EU provides the know-how to provide them.

The Western Balkans commerce with the EU beneath SAAs, which regularly take away tariffs and align nationwide legal guidelines with EU guidelines as a part of the formal accession course of. In contrast, Ukraine and Moldova function beneath Deep and Complete Free Commerce Areas (DCFTAs), broader offers that open massive components of the EU single market in trade for adopting a lot of the EU’s regulatory framework.

In essence, SAAs are a pathway to membership, whereas DCFTAs provide deep EU market integration with out full membership. This distinction has, nevertheless, turn out to be blurred — with Brussels indicating that it believes in full membership for Ukraine and Moldova after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“International locations exporting to the EU face many limitations other than tariffs. Economists name these technical limitations to commerce, reminiscent of phytosanitary requirements,” Jovanović defined.

So even when they produce one thing that there’s a demand for within the EU, it by no means reaches these markets as a result of these corporations won’t have the required certificates.

“So, though unemployment has decreased, there isn’t any actual progress in growth. There may be additionally an actual danger of a middle-income entice, within the sense that these economies stay assembly-line economies, with low wages and restricted technological growth and innovation.”

The identical debate now extends to Ukraine, which formally opened EU accession talks in 2024. Regardless of the warfare, commerce between the EU and Ukraine has surged. Eurostat knowledge reveals the bloc exported €42.8bn value of products to Ukraine in 2024 and imported €24.5bn, yielding a €18.3bn surplus for the EU.

The composition of that commerce has shifted dramatically because the Russian invasion. Agricultural commodities nonetheless dominate Ukrainian exports such however the EU has turn out to be its conduit for reconstruction supplies and equipment.

Neighbouring Moldova, one other candidate nation since 2023, reveals comparable patterns. The EU is Moldova’s largest buying and selling companion, accounting for 54% of its whole commerce in items in 2024. Some 65.6% of Moldovan exports head to the EU.

Commerce turnover reached about €7.5bn final 12 months, with EU exports to Moldova amounting to €5.1bn and imports to €2.4bn.

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The Western Balkans have made strong progress because the early 2000s, however full convergence with the European Union stays a distant aim, warned the OECD’s Financial Convergence Scoreboard for 2025.

The six economies have greater than doubled their output in 20 years — but the area nonetheless solely reaches about 40% of the EU common. At present progress charges, full convergence will not arrive till 2074.

The area’s output per particular person (in purchasing-power parity phrases) has greater than doubled in 20 years, displaying actual enchancment in productiveness, funding, and dwelling requirements.

Which means the Western Balkans are closing the hole, however painfully slowly, and the robust progress charges are offset by the a lot larger productiveness and capital inventory contained in the EU.

Development, by itself, shouldn’t be sufficient for convergence. The Western Balkans want qualitatively totally different progress which is pushed by innovation, expertise, and higher-value industries.

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Infrastructure and productiveness are the area’s weakest hyperlinks.

In response to the OECD report: “The inadequate high quality and protection of core public transport infrastructure generally is a vital impediment to larger financial progress…as insufficient transport networks can severely constrain the connectivity of producers and customers to world and regional markets.”

With regard to Ukraine, its financial system has tailored after a historic shock, however the injury is staggering. A lot of the inhabitants has been displaced and huge swathes of infrastructure have been destroyed.

Output fell –28.8% in 2022 and rebounded +5.5% in 2023. Public funds are being stretched to the restrict by defence wants, hindering convergence with EU member states.

International direct funding (FDI) brings factories and jobs to candidate nations, in addition to constructing stronger hyperlinks with current EU member states. Even so, Jovanović argued that this has not led to “structural transformation” within the candidate nations.

The sample is seen, for instance, in Serbia — the place automotive crops are boosting employment however the nation remains to be importing high-tech equipment.

When FDI concentrates in lower-value levels of manufacturing and native provider bases stay skinny, wage beneficial properties are restricted and extra worth is captured overseas.

“There’s a duality in how FDI is perceived: politicians nonetheless see it as the important thing — typically even the one approach — to develop the financial system, whereas persons are more and more seeing it as a vicious circle,” stated Jovanović.

“Therefore, a change within the financial mannequin is lengthy overdue — with a extra selective strategy in the direction of FDI, specializing in high-quality and high-tech funding and a higher concentrate on home corporations via industrial and innovation insurance policies,” Jovanović added.

The argument is evident: whereas FDI raises employment and hyperlinks these economies to EU markets, it turns into transformative solely when it upgrades the native manufacturing base.

In any other case, candidate nations danger remaining an meeting platform quite than a full companion in Europe’s worth chains.

In the long run, the numbers inform each successful story and a warning. They present integration with out transformation: Exports are up, factories are open, however productiveness and infrastructure nonetheless lag.

The following section might want to hinge on high quality, not simply amount, say specialists. This implies selective FDI that upgrades provide chains, focused single-market entry tied to reforms, and quicker funding in expertise, vitality, and transport.

If Brussels and the candidates can shift from meeting to innovation, the hole can slim inside a era. If not, the candidate nations danger remaining a reliable workshop quite than a affluent companion.