Crunch Time for Enlargement

On 14 and 15 December 2023, the European Council will convene a meeting in Brussels to discuss some of the Union’s most pressing challenges, including the latest developments in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the EU’s long-term budget, and enlargement. [1]The meeting is expected to set the pace, timetable, and modalities for the Union’s enlargement, with the caveat that the ongoing war in Ukraine might require the EU to adapt the enlargement process. [2]

In advance of the summit, the European Commission published the 2023 Enlargement Package on 8 November 2023, including the Communication on EU Enlargement Policy and a series of country reports, which assessed the progress made by the applicants in the past year.

The individual country reports review 8 current candidate countries for accession:

• The Western Balkan states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia,
• two members of the Associated Trio, Moldova and Ukraine, and
• Türkiye.

The Commission has also recommended the European Council grant Georgia candidate status. [3]

However, Kosovo remains a potential candidate, as it has yet to fulfil EU membership requirements, and is not yet recognised by some Member States. [4]

The Commission’s Communication appealed to European leaders to “respond to the call of history, accelerate enlargement and complete the Union” and commended the EU for demonstrating its readiness “to rise to the occasion in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment”.[5] However, it tempered the rhetoric with a pragmatic note that accession must be credible and operate on a merit-based approach.  The Communication refers to the transformative power of enlargement to enhance the EU’s collective security, stability, and prosperity, and to foster reconciliation on the European continent. Yet there is an inbuilt fragility in the process, which allows any EU Member State to wield its veto on the accession of a new candidate. Furthermore, each candidate has been assigned a different set of requirements for accession based on their proximity to EU criteria. Thus, while Ukraine and Moldova need to complete 7 and 9 steps, respectively, Georgia is 12 steps away from the EU accession finish line.[6]

While the onus is on the candidate countries to ensure adequate improvement in their economy, politics, and the rule of law, enlargement will also entail agreement on significant institutional reforms from current EU Member States, along with a political consensus, and a vision of the future shape of Europe that can be clearly communicated to the public.

The Granada Declaration, agreed by leaders of the informal European Council on 6 October 2023, called for EU Member States to undertake the necessary internal groundwork and reform in parallel with candidates. Many EU leaders have chimed in with reform ideas. Larger states, such as Germany, see value in EU reforms, which would subsequently contribute to a smoother enlargement process. Chancellor Scholz, for example, has suggested the Council make more decisions by qualified majority voting (QMV) instead of the currently required unanimity on foreign policy, taxation, and sanctions. [7] On the other hand, smaller states like Lithuania prioritise enlargement over institutional reforms.[8]

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a new momentum for further enlargement has emerged in contrast to the ‘enlargement fatigue’ experienced between the final two waves from 2007 to 2013. This has led many political leaders in the EU to view enlargement as a geopolitical response to said war and a means to restoring security and peace on the continent. Previous enlargement sceptics, such as France, Sweden, and Denmark, have made a U-turn in their support for new accessions, though not in the original spirit of promoting European values. Instead, their focus is now on asserting the EU as the dominant strategic player in the European neighbourhood and curtailing Sino-Russian influence in eastern and southeastern Europe.

Indeed, according to a Standard Eurobarometer survey, the number of enlargement advocates surpasses that of opponents in 24 Member States.[9] In comparison, the average support for enlargement was 44% before the major accession wave of 2004. [10] Still, political trends across the Union could compromise the sustainability of pro-enlargement opinions, with recent polls showing increased domestic support for anti-EU and populist parties. [11] Details of the initial short-term impact of Ukrainian accession on the Common Agriculture Policy, the EU budget and the disbursement of EU funds, for example, have yet to be fully examined by Member States. However, it is argued that when set against the medium to long-term benefit of embracing a large country with a global market in agriculture, this would increase the EU’s standing as a global actor as well as enable the EU to restore peace on the European continent.

Despite the potential for stronger diverging views on a new wave of accessions to the European Union, the narrative of the past 50 years of enlargement has generated political consensus, economic prosperity, and social growth in the EU. It has also enhanced security and respect for rule of law across the region. While this narrative may be fraying at the edges, due to a surge in migration and the rise of right-wing populism, one of the main challenges for EU politicians will be to raise the salience of enlargement in domestic political discourse and win over the public in current Member States by explaining the cost of non-enlargement in the longer term, while acknowledging the costs of enlargement in the short to medium term.

While all 10 candidate and potential candidate countries have a considerable task ahead to progress reforms, EU institutions and Member States will also be challenged to follow suit. Next week’s European Council decisions might mark the next step of a process that according to Irish Minister of State for European Affairs, Peter Burke, is arguably no longer a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when and how’. [12]