Enlargement is regularly touted as the EU’s most effective foreign policy, but since the largest wave of new members joining in 2004, the process has largely stalled.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked a new sense of urgency, with EU leaders holding more meetings with the seven countries still waiting at the door, including a summit in Grenada on Thursday.
Yet some of these applicants have had their applications stalled for more than a decade, despite the membership process and requirements remaining the same.
So what has changed in the EU to make membership so difficult?
Before the 2004 accessions, “everything seemed to be moving in the direction of a more open global world. These countries were, for the most part, in transition from communism to democracy and a market economy. So there was a great sense of hope and we were sending these countries back to Europe,” Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform, told Euronews.
Herman van Rompuy, then President of the European Council, then welcomed the accession of the ten countries, most of them from Eastern Europe, as if “Europe had finally become ‘Europe’ again”.
But today, “the EU is now a much more sober place, also looking at the risks and downsides, the threats it faces and trying to balance all of that as it thinks about the next round of enlargement” , Bond said. .
“The crises have diverted attention”
This new caution on the part of the EU is attributed in part to a series of global crises that the world has faced since then, including multiple financial crises, a migration crisis, the global COVID-19 pandemic and now the invasion large-scale attack on Ukraine by Russia.
They all forced Brussels to take into account its purpose and above all, radically and quickly change some of its operating methods to respond adequately to these challenges.
The financial architecture has been changed, multiple attempts to develop a common migration policy are finally starting to crystallize, joint purchases have been introduced for vaccines and gas, joint debt has been issued to raise funds and EU is now studying common security and safety. defense policy.
“This whole series of crises has distracted attention from enlargement. Enlargement was the EU’s flagship project until 2004, but because of all these distractions, the EU has turned its eyes away from the subject. The urgency was no longer there,” Stefan Lehne, a senior researcher at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, told Euronews.
“Bilateral issues are more important”
Internal developments, experts say, are also to blame, such as the rise of populism and nationalism within the EU, which has led some countries to block membership progress on bilateral issues.
This is particularly true for the Republic of North Macedonia. The country first applied for membership in 2004, gained candidate status in 2005, then suffered 17 years of status quo.
His candidacy was blocked first by Paris and Amsterdam – who argued the enlargement process needed to be improved first – and then by Athens due to a dispute over the country’s name. Once this thorny issue was resolved in 2018, Sofia jumped into the fray to demand formal recognition that North Macedonia’s culture and language are heavily influenced by Bulgaria, as well as stronger protections for Bulgarian minority in the country.
Accession negotiations were finally opened in July 2022.
“The negotiation process has become increasingly difficult and cannot be carried out with the mandate of a single government,” Zulfi Ismaili, head of the Republic of North Macedonia’s mission to the EU.
“This development in accession negotiations draws more or less on the lessons learned by the EU from previous enlargements, coupled with more reserved political support for the process,” added Ambassador Ismaili.
Hungary, led by conservative populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has already indicated it will veto Ukraine’s membership until the country guarantees certain rights to its Hungarian ethnic minority.
Dealing with bilateral issues has always been part of the enlargement process, Lehne said, but “the rise of far-right populist parties certainly makes progress on enlargement more difficult because these bilateral issues are becoming very, very important.” “.
Then there is the issue of democratic backsliding and the erosion of the rule of law in some member states.
It took years of legal conflict between Brussels and in particular Poland and Hungary for a new rule of law mechanism linking respect for EU law and values to the disbursement of EU money. EU was born last year. But progress is still slow, as both countries are slow to implement the rulings of the European Court of Justice and try to use their veto power on other European files to obtain concessions and funds.
The worry is that democracy and respect for the rule of law are already much more fragile and corruption is more widespread in some countries on the EU candidate list and would probably be more inclined to try to game the system.
“It is extremely important for the functioning of the single market that the EU remains a single legal space, a common legal space. This is what Orban (in Hungary) and the ruling Polish party, PiS, risk with their judicial reforms. that you may not be able to go to a court in all 27 member states and get the same decision based on the facts of the case,” Bond said.
Money and voting rights
Another obstacle to enlargement over the past two decades has been the growing debate over so-called absorptive capacity: the EU’s ability to integrate new members without compromising its effectiveness and development.
The two main arguments put forward by EU states to slow down the process are money and the right to vote.
New members tend to be poorer and could absorb much of the bloc’s cohesion funds in the near future. The ten countries that joined the bloc in 2004 all had GDP well below the bloc’s average.
Some models also predict that Ukraine, an agricultural powerhouse, could become the sole net beneficiary of the common agricultural policy if it joins it without the EU first adopting a reform of the rules of this policy.
Another often-raised concern is the potential impact that new members may have on decision-making and that it may be more difficult to find the consensus needed to respond quickly to unexpected challenges unless voting is used. unanimity is no longer restricted in favor of qualified majority voting. .
This concern has grown in recent years as member states have increasingly used their veto power to slow down decisions and extract concessions. Hungary, for example, blocked some sanctions against Russian oligarchs and managed to obtain a significant waiver of the Russian oil embargo. France and Germany also used the unanimity rule to their advantage.
This fear, Bond told Euronews, is largely exaggerated, given that the EU has been able to adapt to the various crises of the last two decades.
“I think people here are perhaps too afraid of what new members might do or that new members might not behave constructively. I think in most cases when countries join the EU, the first thing they want to do is show that they are part of it.” he declared, emphasizing that the subject had already been raised before 2004, then during the accession of Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia in 2007 and 2013.
Gradual integration as a possibility?
For both experts, the EU could have easily responded to all these concerns since 2004 if the enlargement dynamic had been there. This is exactly what Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought.
“At the beginning, the objective (of enlargement) was to consolidate Europe in the context of the East-West confrontation. Even today, it is essentially about understanding that there should be no gray areas between the EU and Russia,” Lehne said.
Since Moscow deployed its tanks in Ukraine, EU leaders have held two summits with their Western Balkan counterparts, with another initiative, the European Political Community (EPC), also created to strengthen ties with third countries in Europe and facilitate exchanges between leaders. ‘ level.
Enlargement will be high on the agenda when CPE leaders meet in Grenada on Thursday. EU leaders will also discuss the topic at their informal meeting on Friday, with the subject expected to be the focus of their summit in December.
One idea that is gaining more and more influence is that of gradual integration with candidate countries allowed to join certain EU policies and programs as they progress through their accession process.
The concept, championed by French President Emmanuel Macron, has garnered support from North Macedonia.
“We believe that the accession process should not focus only on the final objective, which should always remain full membership, but should integrate the candidate countries into the EU structures when the reforms will have been carried out – before accession,” the Ismaili ambassador told Euronews. .
“A closed chapter should mean a seat at the table in the appropriate Council formation (without voting rights). The convergence gap between Member States and candidates should narrow instead of gradually widening,” he said. he declared.