The European Council Experts’ Debrief is our series of policy responses to the regularly published conclusions of the European Council. Each time the European Council meets for a summit, TEPSA gathers its leading academics to comment on the conclusions, analyse alliances formed, maintained, and broken, investigate policy implications, and suggest solutions to move Europe forward.
In this edition of the European Council Experts’ Debrief, our experts focus on the forthcoming discussion on future EU enlargement, due to take place in the December 2023 European Council. TEPSA Secretary-General Jim Cloos asked authors to respond to the question, formulated with TEPSA Executive Director Mariam Khotenashvili: “With the EU’s decision taken last year to grant candidate status to Ukraine, Moldova and possibly Georgia, enlargement generally (including to the Western Balkans and, to a lesser degree, Türkiye) is firmly back on the EU agenda. This decision was based on geopolitical considerations, following Putin’s aggressive behaviour. Assuming that the political decision has been taken and that the EU will stay the course, the candidate countries must work hard to fulfil the accession criteria. However, we would like the experts to focus primarily on two issues concerning the EU itself. The first concerns the conduct of the negotiation process and possible innovations in this respect, including the creative use of a staged approach and transition periods and the question of whether the EU should adopt a step-by-step approach or an all-at-once approach. The second has to do with the absorption capacity of the EU. What will the EU look like as a political body with possibly 36 Member States? How should the EU adjust and reform its various policies (ranging from the CAP to the Single Market and the cohesion policy to security and defence), but also its budget and finances (the challenges facing the EU will require massive funds), and its governance and institutional set-up. How can it ensure the protection of the rule of law across an enlarged EU?”
Ten years since the EU welcomed its most recent new Member State, Croatia in 2013, the situation in Europe is much different: increasing geopolitical aspirations in an increasingly polarised world and the ongoing impacts of Russia’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has turned the conversation back towards the enlargement file. With eight candidate countries, and potential future candidates waiting in the wings, the discussion of the December European Council on enlargement is much needed. Nonetheless, there remain open questions about what the EU must to in order to make enlargement a success, and about what the EU might look like in the wake of future enlargement(s). These themes and more are tackled in this new edition of the European Council Experts’ Debrief.
In addition to the foreword by TEPSA Secretary-General Jim Cloos, expert contributors to this edition include:
- Giselle Bosse, Maastricht University, Netherlands
- Magdalena Góra, Institute of European Studies at Jagiellonian University, Poland
- Niklas Hintermayer, German Council on Foreign Relations, Germany
- Victoria Leukavets & Andreas Umland, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Sweden
- Giles Merritt, Egmont Institute, Belgium
- Kristi Raik, International Centre for Defence and Security, Estonia
- Luigi Scazzieri, Centre for European Reform, Belgium
- Louise van Schaik, Camille van Hees & Wouter Zweers, Clingendael, Netherlands
- Frank Schimmelfennig, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
- Ilke Toygür, University Carlos III Madrid, Spain
- Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Vilnius University, Lithuania
- Natasha Wunsch, Sciences Po, France
- Jaap de Zwaan, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
