Carnegie Europe
20 June 2024
The EU’s enlargement momentum, fueled by Russia’s war against Ukraine, is wearing off, wrtites Dimitar Bechev of Carnegie Europe/ To make political conditionality work, the union must prioritize securing buy-in from candidate countries’ elites and civil society.
Not that long ago, enlargement was a second-order priority for the EU: never off the radar but never really a top agenda item either. Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine changed all that, almost at a stroke. EU leaders have embraced enlargement policy as a part of the union’s response, on a par with weapons deliveries to Kyiv and economic sanctions on Moscow. The twenty-seven-strong bloc has made decisions that few could have foreseen before the war began in 2022. In December 2023, the European Council resolved to open accession talks with Moldova and Ukraine and grant Georgia candidate country status. Bosnia and Herzegovina received an invitation to start accession negotiations three months later.
The war in Ukraine has created the false impression that the EU is on the cusp of a big-bang expansion akin to the 2004–2007 accessions of Central and Eastern European states. Over two years since the start of the war, it is clear that familiar political and institutional hurdles—in both the union and the prospective new members—are constraining the pace and impact of enlargement. Although the EU has not lost its power of attraction, particularly in the economic realm, there are no easy wins on the immediate horizon and into the 2030s.
The EU should continue to push forward integration with Western Balkan and Eastern European countries in functional areas like energy, the green transition, transportation, migration management, and a plethora of other issues. The EU should promote inclusion and participation in institutions and policies short of membership. Such offers may go hand in hand with increased levels of financial support, for example by bringing countries into the EU’s internal market. But pre-membership must also be tied to a calibrated set of conditions.
The EU does not have a magic wand to transform other countries—unless they already want to be transformed. That is the main lesson of the enlargement waves in the 1990s and 2000s. Yet, the EU could do better in using the political, institutional, and economic leverage it has when dealing with its neighbors.
You can find the full text of Carnegie Europe’s Can EU Enlargement Work? here.
