Social Europe

  • EU Forward Project
  • YouTube
  • Podcast
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

EU enlargement—back to the future

Emilija Tudzarovska 22nd September 2023

How the European Union failed to deal with the collapse of Yugoslavia has lessons for the imperative of enlargement today.

European Union,enlargement,Balkans
Rule of law matters for enlargement: the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, seen here at a NATO summit in July, can retain power through economic patronage and political control which allows him to disdain common EU stances (Gints Ivuskans / shutterstock.com)

In the spirit of doing things differently and taking actual steps towards enlargement of the European Union, in January the French and German governments joined forces to convene a working group of experts. This week, a report emerged from this ‘group of 12’, including recommendations for preparatory institutional reforms.

With a window of opportunity opened by the war in Ukraine and reviving the forgotten accession prospects of the western Balkans, the new approach envisages ‘a flexible EU reform and enlargement process’. It would entail further transfers from unanimity to qualified-majority voting (QMV) in decisions by the Council of the EU representing the member states. Foreign, security and defence policy would however remain the subject of national vetoes and a ‘sovereignty safety net’ would allow member states to articulate purported vital national interests in QMV decisions.

This (qualified) enthusiasm for a wider and deeper union is new. In the background hover notions of a ‘geopolitical’ Europe exercising ‘strategic autonomy’, seeking to manage a plethora of crises. But the EU has not been readied for any major enlargements for two decades, while pooling sovereignty butts up against different interpretations of what that means to different member states.

The challenges of enlargement will loom large—thus favouring the status quo—for as long as the EU is seen as a fortress of concentric circles, allied to scepticism that enlargement may dilute the European ‘project’ and a filter of ‘merit-based approaches’, with ill-starred accession processes and ‘conflict-management’ strategies towards those left beyond the European pale. At the same time the applicant states are bidden to legal and institutional transformations, in the context of international shifts and security threats and rising domestic inequalities favouring governments led by populist leaders.

Painful lesson

The return of some of Europe’s historical demons should favour re-examination of past choices, especially during the 1990s. The collapse of Yugoslavia provided a painful lesson for collective EU policy-making. Bilateral defence dialogues were established with successor states, without creating an effective multilateral framework for joint European action. EU foreign policy remained fragmented when it needed to bring equilibrium to a new international order. In this gap, other actors found a place to pursue their own political and economic strategies, with consequences we see today.

The accession strategies which followed for the western Balkans since the 1990s are therefore instructive to analyse the current prospects for EU enlargement, including to take in Ukraine and Moldova. The difficulties of democratic consolidation, after exposure to social transformations, changes in welfare models and economic instabilities, on top of internal conflicts or war(s), were evident. Nation-states would have to metamorphose into EU member states. Many found themselves in limbo, bound by copious normative, legal, political and economic ties to EU integration while remaining vulnerable to other external influences.

In this period, the fascination with high politics among the rulers in Poland and Hungary today was born, amid economic shocks and shifts towards new growth models in the post-communist context. Applying a veneer of ‘copycat liberalism’ to conspiracy-minded majoritarian regimes, as Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have put it, these leaders have been able to stay in power for so long they can now block or restrain strategies within the EU—related to migration policy or security matters—by using their claims to ‘national sovereignty’.

Different routes

The Yugoslav break-up was a chance for the EU to act as a balancing counterweight between the two cold-war superpowers. European security could have traversed very different routes. The road not taken, while regulating relations with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would have brought ‘an experience of learning about new cultures and new ways of doing that creates a common, European sense of belonging’, as Frédéric Mérand put it. When Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were incorporated into NATO in 1999, followed by the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2004, it changed the military balance of power in significant ways now playing out.

EU-NATO complementarity was always seen as a national strategy for the applicant states, especially in the western Balkans. The NATO Bucharest summit in April 2008 however exposed the fragility of this complementary bond. It left shorthanded some applicant states, such as North Macedonia, its NATO and EU accession blocked by Greece—which pursued its dispute over the name of the ‘former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia’ as the purportedly legitimate national interest of an existing EU member.

The ‘sovereignty safety net’ suggested by the ‘group of 12’ exposes the complexity of this entangled relation between the EU and NATO, with the possibility of further complicating enlargement. Hopes but also disappointments can arise in such a space, with its potential for long-term political manoeuvres and escalations of conflict as we have seen.

This year Hungary and Poland pushed to retain the unanimity rule in EU foreign and security policy, justified as ‘defending their national interests in Brussels decision-making’. This exposes not only the challenges facing any ‘geopolitical’ aspiration but also exposes the many shortcomings in the EU related to democratic consolidation and the rule of law.

Anti-corruption policy

The experts’ report stresses probity, transparency and anti-corruption measures within EU institutions and suggests a new independent office equipped with large competences and the means to activate them. A comprehensive EU anti-corruption policy, which would have offered an overview of the risks in member states, was however dropped by the European Commission in 2017.

Monitoring corruption was transferred to the European Semester, a tool for macroeconomic governance not designed to address shortcomings in delivery of the rule of law. These ensure that many corrupt practices are deeply embedded within the neoliberal matrix, albeit to different degrees in different countries, creating a convenient framework for abuses of power and for populist leaders to retain it.

When political actors are not required to offer justifications for the exercise of power as part of a legitimation process involving public scrutiny and fora, citizens’ trust in the ability of the system to solve problems is further undermined. This jeopardises democratic legitimacy on national and supranational levels, while citizens remain trapped in a broken chain of democratic accountability between electoral cycles. External intervention using hybrid means, including the spread of corruption, can then target the effective functioning of the rule of law.

Yet the EU’s acknowledgement of this risk remains incremental and partial. It must uphold the rule of law among member states and offer incentives to the candidate countries in this regard. Both should embrace the new approach of a geopolitical EU, favourable to enlargement, where new European citizens can learn to exercise their rights with a sense of belonging to a European collective interest.

Emilija Tudzarovska
Emilija Tudzarovska

Emilija Tudzarovska is a lecturer in contemporary European politics at Charles University in Prague and a researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences, SOU. Her current research is part of NPO 'Systemic Risk Institute', funded by the EU.

Harvard University Press Advertisement

Social Europe Ad - Promoting European social policies

We need your help.

Support Social Europe for less than €5 per month and help keep our content freely accessible to everyone. Your support empowers independent publishing and drives the conversations that matter. Thank you very much!

Social Europe Membership

Click here to become a member

Most Recent Articles

u4219834664e04a 8a1e 4ee0 a6f9 bbc30a79d0b1 2 Closing the Chasm: Central and Eastern Europe’s Continued Minimum Wage ClimbCarlos Vacas-Soriano and Christine Aumayr-Pintar
u421983467f bb39 37d5862ca0d5 0 Ending Britain’s “Brief Encounter” with BrexitStefan Stern
u421983485 2 The Future of American Soft PowerJoseph S. Nye
u4219834676d582029 038f 486a 8c2b fe32db91c9b0 2 Trump Can’t Kill the Boom: Why the US Economy Will Roar Despite HimNouriel Roubini
u42198346fb0de2b847 0 How the Billionaire Boom Is Fueling Inequality—and Threatening DemocracyFernanda Balata and Sebastian Mang

Most Popular Articles

startupsgovernment e1744799195663 Governments Are Not StartupsMariana Mazzucato
u421986cbef 2549 4e0c b6c4 b5bb01362b52 0 American SuicideJoschka Fischer
u42198346769d6584 1580 41fe 8c7d 3b9398aa5ec5 1 Why Trump Keeps Winning: The Truth No One AdmitsBo Rothstein
u421983467 a350a084 b098 4970 9834 739dc11b73a5 1 America Is About to Become the Next BrexitJ Bradford DeLong
u4219834676ba1b3a2 b4e1 4c79 960b 6770c60533fa 1 The End of the ‘West’ and Europe’s FutureGuillaume Duval
u421983462e c2ec 4dd2 90a4 b9cfb6856465 1 The Transatlantic Alliance Is Dying—What Comes Next for Europe?Frank Hoffer
u421983467 2a24 4c75 9482 03c99ea44770 3 Trump’s Trade War Tears North America Apart – Could Canada and Mexico Turn to Europe?Malcolm Fairbrother
u4219834676e2a479 85e9 435a bf3f 59c90bfe6225 3 Why Good Business Leaders Tune Out the Trump Noise and Stay FocusedStefan Stern
u42198346 4ba7 b898 27a9d72779f7 1 Confronting the Pandemic’s Toxic Political LegacyJan-Werner Müller
u4219834676574c9 df78 4d38 939b 929d7aea0c20 2 The End of Progess? The Dire Consequences of Trump’s ReturnJoseph Stiglitz

ETUI advertisement

HESA Magazine Cover

What kind of impact is artificial intelligence (AI) having, or likely to have, on the way we work and the conditions we work under? Discover the latest issue of HesaMag, the ETUI’s health and safety magazine, which considers this question from many angles.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Ageing workforce
How are minimum wage levels changing in Europe?

In a new Eurofound Talks podcast episode, host Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound expert Carlos Vacas Soriano about recent changes to minimum wages in Europe and their implications.

Listeners can delve into the intricacies of Europe's minimum wage dynamics and the driving factors behind these shifts. The conversation also highlights the broader effects of minimum wage changes on income inequality and gender equality.

Listen to the episode for free. Also make sure to subscribe to Eurofound Talks so you don’t miss an episode!

LISTEN NOW

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Spring Issues

The Spring issue of The Progressive Post is out!


Since President Trump’s inauguration, the US – hitherto the cornerstone of Western security – is destabilising the world order it helped to build. The US security umbrella is apparently closing on Europe, Ukraine finds itself less and less protected, and the traditional defender of free trade is now shutting the door to foreign goods, sending stock markets on a rollercoaster. How will the European Union respond to this dramatic landscape change? .


Among this issue’s highlights, we discuss European defence strategies, assess how the US president's recent announcements will impact international trade and explore the risks  and opportunities that algorithms pose for workers.


READ THE MAGAZINE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI Report

WSI Minimum Wage Report 2025

The trend towards significant nominal minimum wage increases is continuing this year. In view of falling inflation rates, this translates into a sizeable increase in purchasing power for minimum wage earners in most European countries. The background to this is the implementation of the European Minimum Wage Directive, which has led to a reorientation of minimum wage policy in many countries and is thus boosting the dynamics of minimum wages. Most EU countries are now following the reference values for adequate minimum wages enshrined in the directive, which are 60% of the median wage or 50 % of the average wage. However, for Germany, a structural increase is still necessary to make progress towards an adequate minimum wage.

DOWNLOAD HERE

KU Leuven advertisement

The Politics of Unpaid Work

This new book published by Oxford University Press presents the findings of the multiannual ERC research project “Researching Precariousness Across the Paid/Unpaid Work Continuum”,
led by Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven), which are very important for the prospects of a more equal Europe.

Unpaid labour is no longer limited to the home or volunteer work. It infiltrates paid jobs, eroding rights and deepening inequality. From freelancers’ extra hours to care workers’ unpaid duties, it sustains precarity and fuels inequity. This book exposes the hidden forces behind unpaid labour and calls for systemic change to confront this pressing issue.

DOWNLOAD HERE FOR FREE

Social Europe

Our Mission

Team

Article Submission

Advertisements

Membership

Social Europe Archives

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Miscellaneous

RSS Feed

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641