The Western Balkans and the cost of delay

Ukraine is not the first country to spend years as a candidate. Several states in the Western Balkans have held candidate status for well over a decade, and their experience is the most useful comparative material available.

What went wrong there

Not primarily a failure of reform. Substantial legislative alignment was achieved in several of those countries. What failed was the relationship between effort and visible progress.

When a country completes difficult reforms and the process does not advance — for reasons often unconnected to its own performance, including bilateral disputes with member states — the domestic political return on reform falls to zero.

What that produces

Reform fatigue. A government that has spent political capital on unpopular changes and received nothing visible in return stops spending it.

Declining public support for membership itself, which then removes the electoral incentive entirely.

And an opening for alternative partners offering benefits without conditions, which is the outcome the whole process was intended to prevent.

What follows for Ukraine

Momentum is a genuine resource and it is finite. Public support for membership in Ukraine is currently extraordinarily high, and it is high because the destination feels reachable. If a decade passes with reform completed and no advance, that support will erode in the way it eroded elsewhere.

What both sides should draw from it

For Ukraine: do the work regardless, because arriving prepared is the only variable you control.

For the Union: the credibility of the process is itself the instrument. A candidate that believes accession will happen reforms; one that does not, stops — and the Balkans demonstrated that at considerable cost to everyone involved.

The cost of delay is the thing an investor knows best: an open-ended timescale does not kill a project, it makes the financing more expensive. In a country that stays a candidate for a decade, companies stop deciding and qualified people leave. The lesson for both sides is that giving a date is cheaper than giving a concession.