The False Dilemma between Reform and Enlargement

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become one of the main catalysts for change in the world and in Europe. In the European Union and its collective imagination, the impact is evident. The speed with which the entire EU ecosystem is evolving demonstrates this. When there is a threat, real or imagined, it moves fast, sometimes even too fast and without thinking. In the case of the EU, it has been demonstrated very clearly that when there is the political will to act, action is taken.

This has been the case with the EU’s enlargement policy. Juncker’s words in 2018 that there would be no further enlargement if territorial disputes were not resolved first were still echoing in the capitals of the Western Balkans, and France’s halt to the opening of negotiations and sudden change of methodology was still being viewed with suspicion from Tirana and Skopje, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine took place and Brussels reacted by offering Ukraine and Moldova a candidacy they had dreamed of but never thought they would achieve. And with this symbolic gesture of unity in the face of the aggressor, almost without thinking, the EU opened the door to an enlargement comparable to that of 2004 in terms of the number of members, but with one country that makes the difference in terms of its size, its economy, and its circumstances: Ukraine.

Today’s debates are reminiscent of those that took place back in the mid-1990s, when it was debated whether the European project should first be deepened and then extended eastwards, or whether the opposite should be the case. At that time, the middle ground was chosen. A reform of the Treaties was launched in order to prepare the EU for the accession of ten new members, but other not insignificant issues, such as fiscal union or internal controls on certain aberrations, were left out of the equation and are still unresolved today. While awaiting the approval of the Constitutional Treaty, there was no desire to carry out far-reaching reforms, but with the failure of the latter, the emergency solution was the cosmetic arrangements of the Lisbon Treaty.

The incorporation of eight countries from the European centre shifted the EU’s geopolitical axis eastwards, giving greater economic and political power to a recently reunified Germany, which was unable or incapable of resisting this hegemony and, in order not to lose it, has not only not slowed down, but has allowed, under Angela Merkel, illiberal drifts in countries such as Poland and Hungary, which have become strong and know how to play their cards in the EU context. In Ivan Krastev’s terms, the politics of imitation has given way to the politics of contestation, where not only liberal democracy, but also the European framework as it is articulated, is questioned. Thus, not only has the EU shifted to the East, but it has also moved, in its ideological dimension, to the right, without contesting the economic model.



In this context – and with the political proposal made by the main European leaders to advance in the construction of a geopolitical Europe capable of adapting to the new international situation – the incorporation into the EU framework of a series of countries that are disparate but have something in common has been proposed; all of them have the objective of joining the European framework, and all of them have the imperative need to carry out in-depth reforms in order to achieve this. In some cases, such as the Western Balkans, they have been waiting at the EU’s doorstep for almost twenty years – the EU-Balkans Summit dates back to June 2003 – and in others, such as Moldova or Ukraine, the war has allowed them to move towards a European perspective in an express and almost unrestrained manner.

The EU is therefore facing an unprecedented challenge in which, in order to set this process in motion, it is essential to undertake far-reaching reforms that will enable it to improve its absorption capacity, but it also needs to carry out an in-depth reflection on its very nature. If it wants to move too fast, it could find itself returning to pre-Maastricht times, to a large common market but without political integration, and on an intergovernmental basis, where countries like Hungary and Poland would be contented.

It is not, therefore, a question of enlargement or reform; it is a question of carrying out both conscientiously, deepening institutional reform, but also the model of values and rules to which it aspires, while at the same time offering the candidate countries guarantees of return with realistic deadlines. Otherwise, the European framework will suffer total discredit and a lack of confidence on the part of populations who, in time, will look elsewhere. Nothing that has not already been seen before.