In a break from tweeting on the epic sagas that are #Brexit and #Iran, here's a thread on the disaster that is the EU's current enlargement policy a year after @OliverVarhelyi took the helm. 1) So we end year without a negotiating framework to start Albania or N Macedonia talks-1

2) So the aspiration was at least to have council conclusions on the enlargement package from the autumn with progress reports on all candidate countries minus #Turkey. At least, that would be a chance to prod things in the right direction. 3) A reminder that @OliverVarhelyi -2-

enlargement package ran into multiple problems in the @EU_Commission inter-service process that sources tell me was largely because of the very Hungarian spin put on some of the reports. But it finally emerged. 4) But no, Bulgaria was not happy with the council conclusions so-3-

the German presidency worked hard to find language acceptable to Bulgaria (which effectively blocked the N Macedonia talks going ahead) without offending the pro-enlargement countries. The result was an uncomfortable graf in the draft conclusions playing to Bulgaria concerns -4-

To quote (para 8) “The Council underlines that there is no place in the EU for inflammatory rhetoric or glorification of war criminals, from any side. Statements and actions which negatively impact on good neighbourly relations and the peaceful settlement of disputes,”...-5-

“must be avoided. The Council recalls the Prespa agreement between the Republic of North Macedonia and Greece and the Treaty on Friendship, Good-neighbourliness and Cooperation between the Republic of North Macedonia and Bulgaria and stresses the importance of their continued”-6-

"implementation. These two major steps should put an effective end to any claims based on misinterpretation of history." So after Bulgaria's recent vetoes, that language caused plenty of grumbling but people wanted the conclusions passed. This is where gets interesting. -7-

So the conclusions get through COREPER fairly smoothly. There's then some internal discussions with legal service on whether can be adopted written procedure or A item. Legal service advise A-item for today's ENVI council. This morning, all 27 vote to do that, inc CZ, Slovakia-8-

These 2 friends of enlargement, esp. Czechs had been particularly unhappy with Bulgaria's block on N Macedonia framework. In comes the ENVI council to approve the A-item conclusions and Cz, Slovakia, who hours earlier had voted for item to be added, vote against conclusions -9-

Result: no movement on any of enlargement issues this year. No endorsement even of enlargement conclusions. And a lot of angry folks all around. "It is tragic for the Western Balkans that several camps in the EU are blocking each other on enlargement policy," said an EU diplo-10-

"This time, so-called 'friends of enlargement' have vetoed important EU conclusions at ministerial level-after their ambassadors agreed to the texts only yesterday...This sends a devastating signal towards the W. Balkans & opens inroads for other actors." END (Back 2 Iran,Brexit)