The EU benchmarking mechanism in the Western Balkans: Achieving the marks or missing the point?

This policy brief summarizes the findings of a yearlong project with the objective to study the effectiveness of the EU’s benchmarking system on a selected policy issues within the Chapters 23 and 24 focusing on the cases of the WB6. The project is a first major attempt to critically evaluate the degree to which the objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are solved in order to further advance in the EU accession process. For the purposes of our research, we analysed a sample of 8 selected benchmarks in all of the six countries of the Western Balkans since their introduction through desk review of documents and interviews with stakeholders, ensuring variations of benchmarks that relate to legislative alignment, ensuring track record as well as capacity to implement the acquis. The detailed country analyses are available online.

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