EU Enlargement: Past, Present and Future

Enlargement fatigue

The latest enlargement of the European Union took place in 2013, when Croatia joined. An end to enlargement was never announced officially, but when the Juncker Commission entered office in 2014, instead of appointing a commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, they appointed one for neighbourhood and enlargement negotiations (Johannes Hahn).

Negotiations continued to generate reforms in countries with aspirations for EU membership, but now the general feeling is that efforts have not been rewarded. The failure to move Albania and North-Macedonia into candidate status in 2019 October made the governments and the citizens of these two countries upset or even offended. Friends of enlargement were appalled by the perceived arrogance and ignorance of France and the other non-supporters of the case.

This was, however, not a unique hiccup, but another sign of European indecision, which at the same time highlights the limitation of substituting policy with communication. And the issue is more complex than just blaming the reluctant group of wealthy member states. In his famous book (Europe Entrapped, 2015), Claus Offe portrayed EU integration as one that was entrapped, namely in a half-way arrangement from which it cannot move either forward or backwards. For Offe this was mainly an issue of deepening, but the image applies to widening as well.

There are many further applicants for EU membership, some of them already in candidate status and, even if by geographic or population size the Western Balkans would not be a very large-scale enlargement (with altogether 18 million citizens in the 6 countries), there is simply no obvious way for doing it, and some even question the reasons. For most observers, enlargement fatigue is a given. But this is not simply linked to lack of comprehension or empathy, but also the mixed experience with previous enlargements to the East.

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East—West imbalance

From the beginning of the 1990s, EU accession was an expressed desire of societies in the region making its way from state socialism to a market based economic system. EU membership became a reality for the majority in 2004 (and later for Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, and for Croatia in 2013). All this, however, did not lead to the elimination of asymmetries between East and West. Economic growth in the region has remained strongly dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI), and – with EU membership – on receiving union transfers. National governments were able to take advantage of these opportunities with varying degrees of success, but none was able to pull off a miracle.

Asymmetries between East and West have led to tensions within the EU. European integration has never been entirely homogenous, but prior to the eastward expansion, when nine countries were added to the original integration of six members, development gaps were not enormous. The 2004 expansion, however, was novel in that a far greater income gap separated the new member countries from the old than at previous enlargements. For this reason, while capital has largely flowed from West to East, labour has mostly flowed from East to West.

Despite varying paces of convergence in terms of income (GDP), the Eastern region has developed as a kind of inner periphery within the EU. The most important of the features that distinguish this periphery from the EU centre is perhaps the dominance in a wide variety of sectors of transnational companies from higher-income OECD countries.

Labour relations have not converged either. A gulf is apparent between East and West with respect to the levels of organisation of employers and employees, and the strength and prevalence of collective bargaining processes. The latter represents a constant temptation for economic policymakers to strengthen competitiveness to the detriment of workers, while strategies built on vocational training and innovation remain relatively rare.

Coming to terms with the asymmetries within the EU runs into difficulties not only on the eastern side; in West European countries, too, many find them hard to digest. The EU’s expansion meant the accession not only of countries and markets, but also of people – moreover, people with equal rights.?Although countries that have welcomed migrant labour are clearly winners from migration in the economic sense, a kind of “welfare chauvinism” can still be observed among them, turning public opinion against EU migrants. Debates within EU institutions on the subject of “social dumping” lasted very long (raising demand for renewed regulation of services that reach across the borders of member countries).

In reality, the actual risks related to East-West mobility exist not in the recipient states, but among the countries of origin which experience shortages of skilled workers and professionals as well as demographic decline. While the eastward expansion of the EU (in 2004 and 2007) practically doubled labour mobility within the Union, the income gap between East and West is not going away.

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Rule of law and regrets

In EU institutions and EU related academic discussions the most significant debate in connection with the “new member states” is neither the income gap nor demographic decline but the deviations from common standards of rule of law. The countries on the Eastern flank of the EU are characterised with immaturity rather than underdevelopment.?

However, while ten years ago, the lack of maturity in the East was proverbially connected with corruption in Romania and Bulgaria, today it is mainly about the extinction of the rule of law in Hungary and Poland. Serbia and Slovenia are perceived as countries descending into being a franchise of Viktor Orbán, the autocratic ruler of Hungary.?This outcome was not inevitable but the early signs of degeneration did not trigger sufficiently strong response and corrective measures.?

Make no mistake, heavy political anomalies also exist in the West. The strength of the far right from France to Flanders, the Catalunya constitutional conundrum in Spain, and the intertwined informal economic and political power structures in the South of Italy (often called mafia) should all be matters of concern for the whole EU. But?the political deformation in Hungary under Fidesz’ rule tops the list of anomalies. This deformation has consequences, including on EU enlargement policy.

On average, newer member states of the EU are more pro-enlargement than older ones. If they have an opportunity, they advocate the cause of Western Balkans integration and more recently also candidate status for Ukraine. This is where the rule of law controversy unfortunately plays a role:?the political and constitutional quagmire of a few Eastern member states is the worst possible context for those who want to encourage the EU to take seriously and speed up enlargement?– until the entire Western Balkans region becomes part of the EU.

One can call this the enlargement a paradox. Some governments that are keen to proceed with enlargement do everything to disprove that it is a successful and worthwhile project.?Therefore, to help the cause of continuing EU enlargement, Poland and Hungary would need to make a U-turn and re-democratise. Slovenia would need to step out of the shadow of Orbán and recommit to the values of political pluralism and social progress.

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Lessons from past enlargements

While actual progress with the enlargement process is hindered by various factors, and we are waiting for the proverbial “steps to the right direction”, there is some time available to reflect about the 25 years of Eastern enlargement. I would like to highlight three important lessons that might provide some food for thought in the context of the Western Balkans and other contemporary discussions.

The first point is that individual versus group enlargement was a major question 20 years ago. Those considering themselves more advanced were claiming the right to join the EU ahead of the “laggards”. At the end, however, the EU opted for the “regatta” model, which means opening the door for a group as a whole. Some adjustment of the timing was needed and perhaps some investment into the capacity of the weaker ones were also made, but the group approach seemed superior. Maintaining regional balance and cohesion is a legitimate concern for fellow-Europeans, and the EU has to ensure that those with the ambition don’t simply try to impress the centre but demonstrate the capacity to be nice to each other.

The second lesson is that while it is just the entry date which will eventually make it to the yearbooks, enlargement is a very gradual process both before and after the actual entry date. Ex ante: the candidate countries already receive pre-accession funds, and benefit from visa liberalisation. Investment is also facilitated to them by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which turned out to be keen to diminish its involvement in countries that have already joined the EU. On the other hand, free movement of labour and full agricultural subsidies did not come at once for the Eastern “new member states”, the did not immediately join the eurozone, and many of them did not immediately enter the Schengen zone either. Altogether, the enlargement process is by definition a transition process, which puts in question the sole focus on the actual accession year, which nevertheless remains important since it signals the start of participation in political representation and decision making.

The third lesson is that while most observers and political actors focus on the legal and financial aspects of accession, the social dimension is equally important. If it is ignored, it will haunt the partnership in later years. Following the 2004 enlargement round, Eastern and Western member states were locked in a poisonous debate on social dumping for about 15 years. It also took a long time to clarify that the Union expects all member states to integrate their Roma minorities, which is still a policy lacking real enforcement tools. Since trade union membership fell in the East much faster than in the West, collective bargaining today is much weaker, and wage convergence is lagging behind GDP growth (hence the activity of MEPs from the East to encourage the EU to coordinate minimum wages and define minimum standards in health and childcare).

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Brexit effect on enlargement

In the 1990s, students of the European Union in the East could learn in Lesson One that the EU can practically do two things: deepen and widen. A key task for leadership is to balance between the two. Today this premise does not hold: the EU cannot just deepen and widen, but also shrink. Furthermore, at least theoretically, the White Paper of Juncker in 2017 opened up the possibilities of functional withdrawal as well (e.g. going back to “just the single market”, or becoming a “multi-speed” integration). While “undeepening” remains theoretical for the time being, shrinking has been absolutely real, with manifold consequences, including on the budget of the EU.

While it is true that the larger share of the British business and political elites did not want Brexit, it has happened partly because of their success to enlarge the EU to the East, which is another irony. Workers from new member states started to enjoy the freedom of movement (i.e. the right to work in another EU country without a permit) maximum 7 years after accession, but in the British case (vis-à-vis the countries that joined the EU in 2004) from day one. But many in Britain, especially at the time of the great financial crisis and the subsequent slump, looked at the consequences as an unwelcome influx which they could not tame without leaving the single market.

Brexit has made things more complicated for the would-be new members, not least because the UK governments in the past decades were among the most pro-enlargement ones, driven by the intention to make further deepening more difficult. In the future, the British will surely maintain a view on South-East Europe and Eastern Europe, but without a direct say on who should be EU member, and who should not.

In any case, the point is that following Brexit the EU needs to find a new equilibrium, which would somehow already take into account the would-be new members. This, in turn, should not be a simple consideration about what can be financed today or tomorrow, but what this all means in an historic perspective. Brexit drove out of the EU a country that was a net contributor to the EU budget, and this has been repeatedly used as an argument for budgetary restrictions. The actual decisions, on the other hand, gave evidence of the capacity of the Union to raise funds if needed, even if the frontier between net contributor and net recipient countries has changed.

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Western Balkans imperative

While Turkey has preserved its candidate status (which was established in 1999), enlargement debates of recent years revolved around the Western Balkans region. The Slovenian presidency of the EU (in the 2nd half of 2021) worked hard to promote Western Balkans integration and convince the community about the merits of incorporating the territory between Croatia and Greece into the EU. The government of Slovenia organised a summit on the Western Balkans in October 2021 in order to revitalise the process of enlargement.

For those aware of history, the significance of this region for European stability cannot be a question. World War One began with a pistol shot in Sarajevo, and Austria—Hungary subsequently declaring war on Serbia. Such memories should not suggest that the region would always remain explosive for others, but it definitely has remained a source of instability. The Tito era stands out as an extraordinary period of peace and development, but the post-war Yugoslavia was destroyed by the 1980s debt crisis, insoluble distributional issues, rampant nationalism, and eventually violence and even genocide.

The process of EU enlargement has stopped with the two countries that split from Yugoslavia first, those which actually used to be parts of Austria—Hungary before 1918. However, unfinished business, which is an expression often heard in the jargon factory of Brussels, is probably not the right way to describe the situation. The EU and its “geopolitical” Commission should speak about an incomplete reconstruction here. We are facing a region that is greener and younger than the EU average, and has a lot to offer to the EU struggling with population ageing and climate change.

On the other hand, those outraged by the 2019 October shock must admit that there is no automatic right to EU membership. On the other hand, the enlargement sceptics should appreciate that there was a particular understanding in the last few years regarding reform delivery on the one side (including change of name of one applicant country), and the nature of the reciprocal step on the side of the EU. This is what has been derailed, and any further delay threatens with serious loss of credibility and drop of confidence.

Applying the Copenhagen criteria (as defined in 1993) would allow for more dynamic progress, while the EU would need to prepare itself institutionally for the accession of further smaller states.

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Beyond the Western Balkans

Since it is not only the candidate countries but also the EU which needs to transform to make additional accessions possible, it would have been a progressive cause to ensure that when EU nations launch a Conference on the Future of Europe, further enlargement, and specifically the integration of the Western Balkans appear among the top issues of the debate, if not at the very top. This, however, did not happen. It seems that participants of this extraordinary EU consultation with citizens considered other issues paramount from the point of the future of Europe than the extension of the boundaries to the East or South-East.

However, the unprovoked aggression by Russia against Ukraine triggered an application for EU membership by the Ukrainian government. Nobody just a month earlier would have spoken about EU accession in this context as something realistic, but to support the ambition of the Ukrainian government, the European Parliament confirmed that we want to have Ukraine “with us”, and the European Council declared that Ukraine belongs to the European family. Right after the formal application by Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova also decided to apply.

The tragedy of the war makes the Ukraine application special, but there are some important reminders to be made. There has been a case before that a country under partial occupation applied for EU membership (Cyprus). There have been further cases when border issues were unresolved at the time of applying (e.g. between UK and Ireland, Slovenia and Croatia). There have been ways to handle a general sense of instability, just to mention for example the “Balladur Plan” from 1993.

The “Pact on Stability in Europe”, a proposal originating with the French prime minister, was an important initiative by the EU, in the spirit of preventative diplomacy, to help stabilise relations among, and promote cooperation between, the countries of the former?Warsaw Pact?which, in the words of the French government, ‘may eventually be associated to varying degrees with the European Union’. It was designed to encourage central and eastern European countries, which were looking westwards in the hope of future?enlargement, to maintain close mutual relations and continue to work together on sensitive issues. Essentially, Balladur’s stability pact was designed to offer a framework in which they might attempt to resolve border disputes, address problems of minorities and develop relations with Russia in a post-Soviet era.

Consequently, the EU should not refrain from openly discussing the possibility of future membership of countries of the Eastern neighbourhood, as it also has to remain open to the UK rejoining or Iceland reapplying at some point.

If a momentum is gained for EU enlargement from the convulsion of war in Eastern Europe, the next decade bring about the decisions that allow the accession of Western Balkans countries to happen. In the meantime, the reconstruction of Ukraine can be completed, not only in terms of rebuilding infrastructure but also establishing a stable democratic polity and a competitive social market economy which is capable of growing in a sustainable fashion. This could be potentially followed by a period when countries of the Eastern neighbourhood can also in practical terms discuss EU accession, and together we can make it happen.

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Readings

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Andor László (2020) From Enragement to Enlargement, Progressive Post 13 March

Baltag, Dorina (2022) Ukraine’s EU membership: still some way off, in. Social Europe https://socialeurope.eu/ukraines-eu-membership-still-some-way-off

Chiodi, Luisa, Francesco Martino and Serena Epis (2022) Why saving enlargement to the Western Balkans could help overcome the EU crisis, FEPS Progressive Yearbook pp 117-131

Jovic, Dejan (2021) The EU should enlarge to the Western Balkans now, Progressive Post 22 June https://progressivepost.eu/the-eu-should-enlarge-to-the-western-balkans-now/

Marciacq, Florent (2021) Fixing the ethics of enlargement, Progressive Post 22 June https://progressivepost.eu/fixing-the-ethics-of-enlargement/

Mirel, Pierre (2021) Is the future of the Western Balkans in Europe at stake in 2021? FEPS Progressive Yearbook pp 181-182

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