European Union leaders are coming around to the geopolitical necessity of embracing Ukraine, Moldova and western Balkan countries as future EU members, but will struggle to reform the bloc to make it fit for enlargement.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust EU expansion back on to the agenda after two decades in which governments procrastinated over admitting six small western Balkan states with a combined population of 20 million. These countries were given a “European perspective” in 2003, but have done little since then to reform themselves and have long felt unwanted in Brussels. Vladimir Putin is also playing on frozen conflicts or unresolved disputes in Moldova, Georgia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to destabilise Europe’s borderlands.
Conscious of that contest in the grey areas between Russia and the west, the European Commission this month recommended opening accession talks with Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia once they meet key conditions, and granting candidate status to Georgia.
Barring last-minute obstruction by pro-Russian Hungary, the 27 EU leaders will endorse these next steps towards eventual expansion at a summit in December. But it’s far from clear whether they will initiate a review of the EU’s creaking decision-making procedures, administration, budget and financing to prepare to accommodate up to 10 new members in coming years.
In Kyiv this week, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, repeated his view that both the EU and candidate countries should be ready for enlargement in 2030 – a goal seen as wildly ambitious, which many diplomats fear has raised unrealistic expectations in Ukraine. The candidates are far from meeting EU standards on the rule of law and the fight against corruption.
Absorbing Ukraine, a giant agrarian nation of 40 million people that was far poorer than the poorest current EU members even before the destruction wrought by Russia’s onslaught, will be a mammoth economic and political challenge. Without radical internal changes, such as getting rid of national veto powers over foreign, sanctions and taxation policy, the EU may not be able to agree unanimously to admit new members, nor to function effectively once they do join. “We cannot have the same rules for 30-something countries. It’s going to be impossible,” said Mariá Lledó, a senior official of the EU’s current Spanish presidency.
Germany and France, the two central powers in European unification since the 1950s, are pushing for more decision-making by qualified majority voting. They have also circulated a report by independent experts that suggests a Europe of concentric circles, in which an inner core of countries may pursue deeper integration if others do not wish to join in.
Yet few EU governments are willing to contemplate changing the EU’s governing Lisbon treaty, fearing years of wrangling and the risk of losing referendums on ratifying the outcome. Most want any tweaks in the voting system and the budget to be implemented by activating unused clauses in the current treaty.
Several small and medium-sized EU states reject any idea of giving up national vetoes, fearing they will be steamrollered by Berlin and Paris if they lose their blocking power. That includes not only the awkward squad on the rule of law and democracy – Poland and Hungary – but also countries with sweetheart tax regimes for multinationals, such as Ireland and Luxembourg, or those with frugal electorates, such as the Netherlands and Sweden.
Few countries seem willing to forgo the symbol of having a national member of the commission, even though commissioners are bound by oath to serve the common European interest, and not their home countries. Yet an executive of 35 would be dysfunctional when there are only about 15 real jobs in the commission and the treaty doesn’t provide for a hierarchy of senior and junior commissioners.
Admitting new members without changing voting rules and spending policies risks paralysing the union politically and turning some of its biggest current net recipients into net contributors to a budget that would face huge costs to accommodate Ukraine. An internal note produced for the Council of EU governments last month estimated that admitting Kyiv under present rules would cost €186bn in EU funds over seven years, of which about half would go in payments to farmers. Without extra tax resources, that would blow up the EU’s two main spending programmes – the common agricultural policy and funds designed to reduce inequality between the richest and the poorest regions.
The message was clear: the EU will need to radically overhaul the way it subsidises agriculture and develops its poorest regions to make Ukrainian accession affordable without alienating farmers and other stakeholders in existing member countries, even if Kyiv’s access to EU funds were phased in gradually over a decade. Politicians in western European countries that lost referendums in 2005 on a proposed EU constitutional treaty are particularly worried about a public backlash against sacrifices required to admit Ukraine.
Federalists in the European parliament, marshalled by former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, want to kickstart a process of sweeping treaty reform as early as next year. They are urging governments to summon a convention of national and EU lawmakers and government representatives to work on a blueprint for a new weighted voting system, wider competences for the EU, a streamlined commission and, of course, their own right to initiative legislation.
Many experienced EU watchers, who doubt that an enlarged union could function effectively with the current arrangements, insist that institutional reform must either precede or run in lockstep with the accession process. It may sound like the “widening versus deepening” debate that preceded the “big bang” eastward expansion to take in 10 new members in 2004. But this time, geopolitical pressure to unite the European family under a single EU roof is even stronger, and the will for reform has rarely seemed weaker.
Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank
