Potential candidate countries

The EU relations with the Western Balkans states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia) were moved from the "External Relations" to the "Enlargement" policy segment. These states currently are not recognised as candidate countries, but only as "potential candidate countries". This is a consequence of the advancement of the Stabilisation and Association process.

The successor states of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia) have all adopted EU integration as an aim of foreign policy. Slovenia joined the EU on May 1, 2004. Croatia is currently negotiating its entry. The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is recognised as an EU candidate country.

The Republic of Albania in the Western Balkans was for a long period under one of the harshest communist governments in the world, which imposed on the people of Albania an international isolation similar to that of North Korea. The post communist Albanian governments have adopted EU integration as the strategic orientation of the country. The EU signed a bilateral agreement with Albania on 13 April 2007 which included visa facilitations for the Albanian citizens. The signing EU Commissioner Franco Frattini was quoted saying that this is the first step toward a full abolishment of the visa requirements and the free movement of the Albanians in EU.

The 2003 European Council summit in Thessaloniki set integration of the Western Balkans as a priority of EU expansion. A further meeting in Mamaia, Romania, concluded that "Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro are considered likely to join the EU between 2010 and 2015" depending on their fulfilment of the adhesion criteria. This summit was attended by two EU members, seven countries now in the EU, and the eight EU hopefuls (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine). However, this summit was not linked to any EU institution, whatsoever, and the target dates and agreements presented there mainly aimed at encouraging the candidate and potential candidate countries on their way to eventual full membership into the EU.

On November 9, 2005, the European Commission has suggested in a new strategy paper that the current enlargement agenda (Croatia, Turkey and the Western Balkans) could potentially block the possibility of a future accession of Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia. Olli Rehn has said on occasion that the EU should "avoid overstretching our capacity, and instead consolidate our enlargement agenda," adding, "this is already a challenging agenda for our accession process."