Where are the borders of the European Union? With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that question is once again pontifically on the table. And that while they prefer not to talk about it in European capitals. Since the last two major rounds of enlargement, in 2004 (ten new Member States, including Poland) and 2007 (Bulgaria, Romania), there has been ‘enlargement fatigue’. The last time a country was included in the EU family was in 2013: Croatia. There are candidate countries, such as Albania and North Macedonia, but for various reasons they have not progressed beyond the waiting room for the time being – and there never seemed to be much rush to get them out of it. Turkey has been a candidate for membership since 1999. As Putin tries brutally to redraw the map of Europe, the EU too is forced to think about where it starts and where it ends. A first major step was taken on this new quest in Brussels on Thursday. At a summit, government leaders decided that Ukraine and Moldova could be admitted to the waiting room of the EU.
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In the past, enlargement was mainly about increasing the internal market, free trade and labor mobility. For the British, making the EU bigger was also a way of making France and Germany smaller and avoiding deepening EU cooperation too much. The war shows that there is also a strong geopolitical dimension to expansion. When Russia crosses borders, the EU has no choice but to draw borders. Ukraine and Moldova’s candidate membership, following the NATO ambitions of Finland and Sweden, is yet another sign that Putin has completely lost touch with his ‘backyard’. French President Macron spoke on Thursday of a “vacuum” that must be filled quickly. It should be clear to everyone that the EU recognizes and supports the Ukrainian, Moldovan and Georgian dreams of self-determination and prosperity – and that the return of nineteenth century imperialism is not being taken for granted.
So much for the short term. In the longer term, there are many big questions. Won’t an even bigger EU become ungovernable? Isn’t she getting very ‘Eastern European’? Are the newcomers really ready for it? And not unimportant: are the current EU countries the same? The massive arrival of migrant workers fueled Britain’s aversion to the EU. The rejection of a European ‘constitution’ in 2005 indicated growing discomfort with an expanding EU. After their accession, Poland and Hungary no longer took the rule of law principles that they had so fervently embraced in the waiting room. That caused a lot of bad blood. In 2020, the accession procedure was tightened up at the insistence of France and the Netherlands. It is now a goosebumps game: in addition to moving forward, countries can now also go backwards if they make too little progress, for example in the area of the rule of law.
Ukraine is expected to have a long road ahead, and after clearing all the hurdles, it would become the EU’s fifth largest country with 44 million inhabitants. Germany has traditionally felt a strong historical responsibility towards Eastern Europe and would literally play a more central role. What will France think of that? Further eastward expansion means a different Union, with a different center of gravity and a different voting balance. France, and also large economies such as the Netherlands, will undoubtedly press for new arrangements that do not weaken their own position too much. It is not without reason that Macron has recently been calling for the establishment of a parallel ‘European political community’, a ring of countries around the EU that are not (yet) or do not want to be an EU member, but do want very close cooperation. And it is not without reason that Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) thinks that is quite a good idea.
Macron wants portal EU for countries like Ukraine
Good or not, the plan puts the finger on the sore spot: the harder road to EU membership must not demotivate countries. Along the way, they need to be much more actively involved in the EU than they are now. Letting countries simmer endlessly in a waiting room is counterproductive and is geopolitically unwise, as China in the western Balkans demonstrates. Because of the European hesitation, it was able to pose as a sugar daddy there. Thinking ahead is not the strong point of the EU, whose dynamics seem to be determined mainly by crisis situations and elections. However, also in the Netherlands, there is a need for strategic thinking power more than ever. It is crucial that open thinking and debate is already started on what the EU of the future looks like. Not just in ten years’ time, when expectations in candidate countries will only have increased, and perhaps the concerns in EU countries too.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 25, 2022