EU enlargement used to be a big deal. It made academic careers, filled up newspaper columns, and set foreign ministries abuzz. Nowadays it is more of a niche subject. You do meet the odd Brussels think tanker or European Commission functionary who is enthused about Montenegro clearing benchmark X, Y or Z in its membership talks or eager to discuss the latest report on the state of Albania’s judiciary. But that’s not what keeps most EU watchers up at night.

It is not difficult to grasp why EU expansion feels so passé. Turkey is not even pretending to be interested in membership anymore. Ukraine is a decade or more away from membership, if it’s lucky. The Western Balkans are about the only region where the game is still on. But outsiders seem to care little—unless there’s a link to hot issues such as Russian meddling, ISIS recruitment, or the Chinese economic expansion across Europe. It is the shrinking or the splintering of the European Union that grabs most headlines: Brexit, the north-south cleavage polarizing the politics of the Eurozone, and the challenge posed by the likes of Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczyński.

Yet it is still too early to write off EU enlargement. The European Commission, the Western Balkan governments, and a handful of EU countries are ensuring that the prospect does not fade. On February 6, the Commission unveiled a new strategy to inject dynamism into what some dismiss as a technical exercise. It comes with a big promise to “frontrunners” such as Montenegro and Serbia: If they do everything right, they might achieve accession in 2025. The choice of year is far from arbitrary. It’s when a new EU five-year budget will kick in. After all, new members cost money, whether it is for infrastructure or agricultural subsidies. With a pro-Western coalition in power since May, Macedonia also has a fair shot at accession later in the 2020s, if (and it’s a big “if”) it somehow succeeds in settling the long-standing name dispute with Greece.

Further down the list are the rest of the pack, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, which do not cheer Jean-Claude Juncker’s new proposals. “Why reward Serbia, which remains at the root of many problems across ex-Yugoslavia,” politicians and pundits are asking in dismay, “and penalize us?” To be fair, there is a bitter pill for Serbia, too, in that the EU Commission has made it abundantly clear Serbia would need to recognize Kosovo’s independence to gain membership. Belgrade is also under pressure demonstrate “full alignment” with EU foreign policy (translation: please join the sanctions against Russia).

The whole fuss about who is entering the European Union when and at whose expense is perfectly understandable. But it misses the point. The big question, looming even larger today with democratic norms and institutions under strain across Europe, is what good does membership do for the countries and societies entering the EU. The received wisdom that accession advances democratization and anchors the rule of law is being put to the test in Hungary and Poland, where governing parties seek to perpetuate their control over the state. Furthermore, it is ironic that the grand vision for the Western Balkans’ entry into the Union will be announced at a summit in Bulgaria, which currently holds the EU Council presidency. Sofia’s record of combating state capture and rooting out corruption (described recently by a cabinet member as a “matter of perceptions”) is not exactly stellar. One can safely bet that—all things being equal—Serbia, Montenegro, and other post-Yugoslavs will be a replica of Bulgaria, where political elites love Brussels’s cash but have little time for its sanctimonious talk about accountability and the rule of law. By the standards of Milo Djukanović, Montenegro’s uncrowned prince, Orbán is a mainstream democrat. At least he has spent time in opposition, while Djukanovic has hopped back and forth from the presidency to the Prime Minister’s office.

Perhaps the greatest misconception about European integration is that it changes countries. It does not. The truth is that Europe helps countries change themselves. EU institutions did not transform Central and Eastern Europe—they amplified or locked in domestic processes that had been underway. And now, we find out, some of the gains are reversible. Conditions in the Western Balkans are recognizably worse than in Central Europe, starting with the legacy of wars and the unresolved territorial and constitutional issues and ending with a lack of economic development. It is not a hospitable environment for the growth of a robust civil society that could hold elites accountable and resist state capture. The EU, with its political conditionality and arsenal of carrots and sticks, is in a position to compensate in part for the deficits within countries. But Eurocrats need local stakeholders, not merely elites who have learned how to talk the talk without walking the walk. There are green shoots, to be sure: the “colorful revolutionaries” who marched on the streets of Skopje for more than two years between 2015-7, the Don’t Let Belgrade D(r)own movement triggered by abuses of power in the Serbian capital’s city hall, students protesting in Pristina, and the civic assemblies in Bosnia. Yet bottom-up civic mobilization matters little unless it is translated into ballots on election day. And there are significant impediments from on high. To only one example, omnipotent Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić decides when elections take place, how the media covers the campaign, and who will be counting the votes.

However, for all intents and purposes, the Western Balkans long ago made it into the EU sphere. There are no longer visas (except for Kosovo) preventing people from traveling to Vienna, Paris, Rome, or Stockholm. The European Union is by far the most significant trade partner and source of foreign direct investment in the region, for all the talk about Russia, China, or Turkey. It is also enmeshed in the Union’s regulatory space. Thanks to the European Common Aviation Area, citizens in the West Balkans have access to low-cost flights connecting them to remote corners of the Continent. In short, while the EU has no magic wand, it does deliver. The new Commission strategy showcases ideas such as abolishing roaming charges and rolling out broadband connectivity. People are aware of the benefits. Even in skepticism-ridden places like Serbia, where enthusiasm for membership is low, polls register that those who see the Union in positive or neutral light form a majority (that was the case in Croatia before joining in 2013, too).

In a sense, enlargement has already taken place—with all its pros and cons.