The perils of succor: The European Union's financial role in the Western Balkans during COVID-19

The Western Balkans' response to the first wave of COVID-19 was efficient and swift. The countries’ capacity to mitigate the crisis has been vastly facilitated by EU fiscal disbursements. The funds have enabled governments to implement health and economic policies that counteract the crisis' socioeconomic repercussions. In this article, I examine the temporal effects of EU conditionality on the health outcomes and democratic governance of Balkan states. Identifying three features of the domestic political context—government accountability, the strength of opposition parties, and judicial system effectiveness—I assess the likelihood of divergent effects of the funds on health and democratic outcomes. I argue that while beneficial in the short term, in the long run, the EU funds risk enabling state capture and inadvertently jeopardizing the Western Balkans' post-pandemic democratic prospects. I empirically substantiate my argument by examining the relationship between prior EU allocations (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance) and clientelism in WB states during 2007–2017.