EU enlargement: back to the future

The failure of the European Union to deal with the collapse of Yugoslavia provides lessons for today’s enlargement imperative.

In the spirit of doing things differently and taking concrete steps towards the enlargement of the European Union, the French and German governments have joined forces convene a working group of experts. This week, a report emerged from this “group of 12,” including recommendations for preparatory institutional reforms.

With a window of opportunity opened by THE war in Ukraine and revive the forgotten membership prospects of the Western Balkans, the new approach envisages “a flexible process of reform and enlargement of the EU”. This would require further transfers of unanimity has qualified majority voting (VMQ) in decisions of the Council of the EU representing the Member States. Foreign, security and defense policy would, however, remain subject to national vetoes and a ‘security of sovereigntyyou would allow Member States to articulate their so-called vital national interests in QMV decisions.

This (moderate) enthusiasm for a broader and deeper union is new. In the background hover the notions of a ‘geopolitics“Europe exercising “strategic autonomy”, seeking to manage a a multitude of crises. But the EU has not been ready for major enlargements for two decades, while pooling sovereignty faces different interpretations of what it means for different member states.

The challenges of enlargement will be considerable, thus favoring status quo– as long as the EU is considered a fortress of concentric circles, combined with skepticism that enlargement could dilute the “project» and a filter of “merit-based approaches”, with membership process and “conflict management” strategies towards those left beyond the European turned pale. At the same time, candidate states are forced to make legal and institutional transformations, in the context of international changes, security threats and growing national inequalities favoring governments led by populist leaders.

Painful lesson

The return of some of Europe’s historical demons should encourage a re-examination of past choices, particularly in the 1990s. The collapse of Yugoslavia provided a painful lesson for collective EU policy-making. Bilateral defense dialogues were established with successor states, without creating an effective multilateral framework for joint European action. EU foreign policy remained fragmented when it was necessary to restore balance in a new international order. In this gap, other actors found room to pursue their own political and economic strategies, with the consequences we see today.

The subsequent accession strategies for the Western Balkans since the 1990s are therefore instructive for analyzing current prospects for EU enlargement, including to Ukraine and Moldova. The difficulties of democratic consolidation, after being exposed to social transformations, changes in social protection models and economic instabilities, in addition to internal conflicts or wars, were evident. Nation states should metamorphose in EU member states. Many found themselves in limbo, bound by numerous normative, legal, political and economic ties to European integration while remaining vulnerable to other external influences.

At that time, the fascination with high politics among today’s Polish and Hungarian leaders was born, amid economic shocks and shifts towards new growth models in the post-communist context. Applying a veneer of “copycat liberalism” to conspiracy-minded majority regimes, such as Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes I put itthese leaders have been able to stay in power for so long that they can now block or restrict strategies within the EU – related to migration policy or security issues – using their claims of “national sovereignty”.

Different routes

The breakup of Yugoslavia was an opportunity for the EU to play the role of counterweight between the two superpowers of the Cold War. European security could have crossed very different paths. The path not taken, while regulating relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would have brought “an experience of learning new cultures and new ways of doing things which creates a common sense of European belonging”, as Frédéric Mérand says. Put the. When Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were incorporated into NATO in 1999, followed by the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, the balance of military forces was significantly changed.

EU-NATO complementarity has always been considered a national strategy for candidate states, particularly in the Western Balkans. NATO Bucharest Summit in April 2008, however, revealed the fragility of this complementary link. This left some candidate states short-handed, such as North Macedonia, whose membership in NATO and the EU was blocked by Greece, which continued its dispute over the name of the “former republic”. Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” as a supposedly legitimate national interest of an existing EU member.

The “sovereignty safety net” suggested by the “Group of 12” exposes the complexity of this tangled relationship between the EU and NATO, with the potential to further complicate enlargement. Hopes but also disappointments Such space can arise, with its potential for long-term political maneuvering and conflict escalation, as we have seen.

This year, Hungary and Poland pushed to keep the rule of unanimity in EU foreign and security policy, justified as “defending their national interests in the Brussels decision-making process”. This reveals not only the challenges facing any “geopolitical” aspiration, but also the EU’s many shortcomings related to democratic consolidation and the rule of law.

Anti-corruption policy

The experts’ report emphasizes probity, transparency and anti-corruption measures within European institutions and suggests a new independent office with broad skills and the means to activate them. However, a comprehensive EU anti-corruption policy, which would have provided an overview of risks in member states, was abandoned by the European Commission in 2017.

Corruption monitoring has been transferred to the European Semester, a macroeconomic governance tool that is not designed to address gaps in the application of the rule of law. These ensure that many corrupt practices are deeply rooted in the neoliberal matrix, albeit to different degrees across countries, creating a framework ripe for abuse of power and allowing populist leaders to keep it.

When political actors are not required to justify the exercise of power within the framework of a legitimation process involving public scrutiny and forums, citizens’ confidence in the system’s ability to resolve problems is further undermined. This puts democratic legitimacy at national and supranational levels at risk, while citizens remain stuck in a broken chain of democratic accountability between electoral cycles. External intervention using hybrid means, including the spread of corruption, can then target the effective functioning of the rule of law.

However, the EU’s recognition of this risk remains gradual and partial. It must uphold the rule of law between member states and offer incentives to candidate countries in this regard. Both should adopt the new approach of a geopolitical EU, favorable to enlargement, where new European citizens can learn to exercise their rights with a feeling of belonging to a collective European interest.