The Changing Mood Music of EU Enlargement

 

On the feast of Bealtaine (May Day), Ireland and the European Union celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the largest single expansion of the European Union to date. On 1 May 2004, ten countries were simultaneously welcomed as new Member States: Cyprus, Malta, Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Ireland, which held the Presidency of the European Union at the time, celebrated the enlargement with a special “Day of Welcomes” in Phoenix Park. The official ceremonies took place at the residence of the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, and on the grounds of Farmleigh, where leaders from the Member States were greeted by then-Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and participated in a flag-raising ceremony.

The cultural celebrations highlighted the strong sense of European identity in the newly acceded countries and marked a geo-strategic decision by the EU to embrace several European states which had shifted their political allegiance from East to West. The symbolism of their return to their “European home” was captured by the then-Irish Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney, who recited a poem entitled Beacons at Bealtaine, commissioned by the Irish Government for the EU Enlargement Ceremony:

“So on a day when newcomers appear
Let it be a homecoming and let us speak
The unstrange word, as it behoves us here,

Move lips, move minds and make new meanings flare
Like ancient beacons signalling, peak to peak,
From middle sea to north sea, shining clear
As phoenix flame upon fionn uisce here”.[1]

Other events also took place in 10 Irish towns and cities, each of which was twinned with one of the new Member States to foster intercultural awareness of the new Member States amongst the Irish public. Galway was twinned with Estonia, for example, and hosted the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, which performed the “last concert of the Old Europe,” while Bray held a celebration for Cyprus with the theme “From our shore to your shore”. The other host towns and cities and their guests were Cork (Slovakia); Drogheda (Latvia); Kilkenny (Lithuania); Killarney (Czechia); Letterkenny (Poland); Limerick (Slovenia); Sligo (Hungary) and Waterford (Malta).

Two years after the 2004 enlargement wave, Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU as new Member States, and Croatia was the last to join in 2013. From 2019, interest in further enlargements waned and focus shifted elsewhere. Gradually, ‘enlargement fatigue’ set in, with the surge in migration to the EU in 2015 and the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic leading to the EU agenda prioritising other issues. Despite this, the Union opened accession negotiations with five candidates: Türkiye in 2005, Montenegro in 2012, Serbia in 2014, and Albania and North Macedonia in 2020. 

However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 radically changed the geopolitical situation of the European Union and generated considerable momentum for further enlargement. In that year alone, three new countries in the EU’s neighbourhood were granted candidate status: Moldova and Ukraine in June 2022 and Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 2022. New enlargement negotiations were agreed at the European Council in December 2023, which granted candidate status to Georgia, opened accession negotiations with Moldova and Ukraine, and followed suit with Bosnia and Herzegovina at the March 2024 European Council.

Although the forthcoming enlargement of the EU foresees the accession of up to 10 countries, there is no longer a sense that the so-called ‘Big Bang approach’ will be adopted this time round. Enlargement will be organised on a “gradual” and “merit-based approach”, a regatta-style enlargement that will require institutional changes on the EU side and painful but transformative changes in the candidate countries, rewarding those who succeed. Innovations in the process of enlargement will allow candidate countries access to financial and practical aid in advance of accession to assist them in moving faster on the path to enlargement, though there will be conditions attached to such funding. Pragmatism and principle will determine whether respect for the rule of law and EU values are reflected in the actual implementation of reforms within the candidate countries. Institutional issues, such as the absorption capacity of the EU, its capability to act in the future, notwithstanding the veto power of all Member States, and the need to future-proof Europe against the direct and insidious Russian threats will dominate reflection by EU leaders at the European Council. 

While there will be significant costs on both sides of the enlargement equation, they are outweighed by considerations of the geopolitical cost of non-enlargement and by the aspiration that hope and history will once again rhyme, bringing economic, social, and political benefits to all citizens of the European Union in the future.