June 2025.

The article The EU’s Waning Attractiveness authored by Dimitar Bechev and published by Carnegie Europe in June 2025, examines the decline in the European Union’s appeal in its neighborhood, using the cases of Georgia and Serbia as illustrations. Despite their status as candidate countries, the leaders of both nations seem to favor a form of “à la carte” integration, keeping the economic benefits of closer ties with the EU while reducing the political constraints associated with the accession process.

This development can be attributed both to the decisions made by the leaders of these countries and to the limits of the EU’s enlargement policy. The slow pace of the process, divisions among member states and uncertainty surrounding accession prospects are contributing to a strategy of “hedging” and “multivectoring”, in which Belgrade and Tbilisi seek to preserve their flexibility between the European Union, Russia, China and other partners.

This situation is fostering the emergence of a “non-enlargement” model, in which candidate countries benefit from close cooperation with the EU without fully committing to the path toward accession. The article therefore argues that the EU should focus its resources more on countries that are actively pursuing the required reforms, while maintaining flexible ways of cooperating with states that are less willing to meet the conditions for accession.

You can find the article “The EU’s Waning Attractiveness” by Dimitar Bechev and published by Carnegie Europe here.