EU redistributes Western Balkans funding: First this morning, a scoop by my colleague Luca Bertuzzi. The European Commission is set to redistribute funding it has allocated to Western Balkan candidate countries, with frontrunners Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia poised to receive cash at the expense of other countries in the region, two EU officials told Euronews.
The Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans, set up in 2024, provides €6 billion in financial incentives for EU candidate countries in the region to implement the reforms needed to advance in their bids to join the bloc. The tool covers the 2024-2027 period, with the ambition of doubling the size of Western Balkan economies within the next decade.
However, according to the Commission's own data, only around €673 million has been released under the facility. Almost all of that funding has gone to just three of the six candidate countries widely seen to be consistently hitting their reform targets – Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia. Those frontrunners are now set to receive more funds to avoid the money from going to waste.
The biggest loser looks set to be Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has not received any funding under the facility so far, having failed to deliver any of the required reforms — largely because of its complex institutional set-up. Kosovo and Serbia are also set to lose out. Luca has more details.
