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Abstract
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed the European Union’s attitude towards enlargement. Whereas five years previously European leaders had suggested that any expansion of the EU should be put on hold, suddenly they embraced potential membership for Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and the Western Balkans. Enlargement is the strongest instrument that the EU has to bring stability to and foster reform in bordering countries. But that strategy invites risk. Countries might join before their democracies are stable and before European institutions are ready to accommodate a wider and more diverse membership. Nevertheless, enlargement is better than the alternative. Russian victory over Ukraine would threaten not only the security of the EU but also the functioning of the single market, efforts to fight inflation and the stability of the financial system. The EU needs enlargement to protect the European commons.
Notes
1 See European Commission, ‘The Ukraine Facility’, https://eu-solidarity-ukraine.ec.europa.eu/euassistance-ukraine/ukraine-facility_en; and European Commission, ‘New Growth Plan for the Western Balkans’, https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-policy/new-growth-plan-western-balkans_en.
2 For an early expression of this concern, see Veronica Anghel and Erik Jones, ‘Broken Promises Diplomacy: The Russia–Ukraine War and the End of Enlargement as We Know It’, in Jelena Džankić, Simonida Kacarska and Soeren Keil (eds), A Year Later: War in Ukraine and Western Balkan (Geo)Politics (San Domenico di Fiesole: European University Institute, 2023), pp. 6–14. See also Richard Youngs, Geoliberal Europe and the Test of War (London: Agenda Publishing, 2024), pp. 83–102.
3 See République française, ‘Conférence de presse de M. Emmanuel Macron, président de la République, sur le Brexit, la construction européenne, l’offensive turque en Syrie et l’élargissement de l’Union européenne, à Bruxelles le 18 octobre 2019’, 18 October 2019, https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/271370-emmanuel-macron-18102019-union-europeenne.
4 ‘Emmanuel Macron: Europe – It Can Die. A New Paradigm at the Sorbonne’, Groupe d’Études Géopolitiques, 26 April 2024, https://geopolitique.eu/en/2024/04/26/macron-europe-it-candie-a-new-paradigm-at-the-sorbonne/.
5 For two classic versions of this argument, see Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-state, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2000); and F. Roy Willis, France, Germany and the New Europe, 1945–1967 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968).
6 See A.W. DePorte, Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986); and Geir Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
7 See Alexis Heraclides, The Greek–Turkish Conflict in the Aegean: Imagined Enemies (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and Erik Siegl, ‘Greek–Turkish Relations – Continuity or Change?’, Perspectives, no. 18, Summer 2002, pp. 40–52.
8 See Mary C. Murphy, Europe and Northern Ireland’s Future: Negotiating Brexit’s Unique Case (London: Agenda Publishing, 2018).
9 Quoted in Stephen Wall, Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 99.
10 See Christopher Hill, The Future of British Foreign Policy: Security and Diplomacy in a World After Brexit (Cambridge: Polity, 2019).
11 See Rebecca Adler-Nissen, Opting Out of the European Union: Diplomacy, Sovereignty and European Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
12 See Veronica Anghel and Erik Jones, ‘Failing Forward in Eastern Enlargement: Problem Solving Through Problem Making’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 29, no. 7, 2022, pp. 1,092–1,111.
13 See Paolo Cecchini, Erik Jones and Jochen Lorentzen, ‘Europe and the Concept of Enlargement’, Survival, vol. 43, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 155–65.
14 See Erik Jones, ‘The Politics of Europe 2002: Flexibility and Adjustment’, Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 34, no. 5, December 2003, pp. 363–78.
15 See Merje Kuus, Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
16 See Veronica Anghel, ‘Together or Apart? The European Union’s East– West Divide’, Survival, vol. 62, no. 3, June–July 2020, pp. 179–202.
17 See Adler-Nissen, Opting Out of the European Union.
18 See Philipp Ther, Europe Since 1989: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 157.
19 See Stuart Shields, ‘Poland and the Global Political Economy: From Neoliberalism to Populism (and Back Again)’, in Gareth Dale (ed.), First the Transition, Then the Crash: Eastern Europe in the 2000s (London: Pluto Press, 2011), pp. 169–86.
20 See Veronica Anghel and Erik Jones, ‘What Went Wrong in Hungary’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 35, no. 2, April 2024, pp. 52–64; and Zsuzsanna Szelényi, Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary (London: C. Hurst and Co., 2022).
21 This comparison is developed in Till Hilmar, Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023).
22 See Die Bundeswahlleiterin, ‘Europawahl 2024’, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/europawahlen/2024/ergebnisse.html.
23 See Hilmar, Deserved.
24 See Lenka Bustikova, Extreme Reactions: Radical Right Mobilization in Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); and John A. Gould, Fragile Dreams: Tales of Liberalism and Power in Central Europe (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2021).
25 See László Bruszt and Visnja Vukov, ‘Core–Periphery Divisions Within the EU? East–West and North–South Tensions Compared’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 31, no. 3, January 2024, pp. 850–73.
26 See Fabio Mattioli, Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism at the Margins of Europe (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020).
27 See Cecchini, Jones and Lorentzen, ‘Europe and the Concept of Enlargement’.
28 See Anghel and Jones, ‘Failing Forward in Eastern Enlargement’, pp. 1,105–6.
29 See László Bruszt and Julia Langbein, ‘Development by Stealth: Governing Market Integration in the Eastern Peripheries of the European Union’, MAXCAP Working Paper Series, no. 17, November 2015, https://userpage.fuberlin.de/kfgeu/maxcap/system/files/maxcap_wp_17.pdf.
30 Matthias Thiemann, Dan Mocanu and Dora Piroska, ‘The European Investment State and the Modalities of European Integration in Ukraine: Development Banks, Investment Frameworks and the Role of Local Actors’, unpublished manuscript, 2024.
31 See Veronica Anghel and Erik Jones, ‘The Enlargement of International Organisations’, West European Politics, February 2024, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2311044.
32 See Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Ostrom (a political scientist) won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her study of these organisations. See Elinor Ostrom, ‘Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems’, 8 December 2009, https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/ostrom_lecture.pdf.
33 Enrico Letta, ‘Much More than a Market: Speed, Security, Solidarity – Empowering the Single Market to Deliver a Sustainable Future and Prosperity for All EU Citizens’, European Council, April 2024, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/ny3j24sm/much-more-than-a-marketreport-by-enrico-letta.pdf.
34 Ibid., pp. 139–40.
35 Ibid., p. 140.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Veronica Anghel
Veronica Anghel is an assistant professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
Erik Jones
Erik Jones is Director of the Schuman Centre.