A Quixotic, yet Necessary Plan to Expand the European Union
https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-flags-on-pole-0NRkVddA2fw
Europe is divided. And paradoxically, it’s the most united it has ever been.
A continent long known for irreparable border strife, crimson-colored battlefields, and power-hungry autocrats, Europe today possesses arguably the most successful peacemaking institution in history: the European Union. Founded in the wake of the Second World War, the EU has so effectively intertwined its member states—both diplomatically and economically—that many view war within its confines as impossible.
There’s certainly merit to this claim. Should a member state decide to show aggression towards a neighbor, it risks monetary meltdown by forfeiting use of the Euro. It would lose crucial EU funding for agricultural, infrastructural, and scientific development. And its business productivity would plummet without access to the European single market. In essence, the EU has neutered its states’ war-making ability.
However, the question on the minds of EU leaders and policymakers alike is not one of furthering peacemaking within the union’s borders. It’s a question of whether to enhance peacemaking outside of them—most notably by accepting new members.
The EU’s largest expansion was in 2004, in which it accepted ten new states in a post-Iron Curtain attempt to stave off war and unify the continent. It largely worked—members like Estonia and the Czech Republic have largely evolved into prosperous, market-based democracies.
Since then, however, the EU has been reluctant to add new member states. Several applicants, including Turkey, Albania, and Montenegro, have endured negotiations for decades with no end in sight. For the large part, the EU simply wants its members to meet certain economic and democratic benchmarks for accession, which these nations have not met.
Yet, many EU leaders are also concerned that these nations’ entrances into the union may spark fierce political backlash in current member states. EU membership grants citizens access to the Schengen Area, within which individuals can travel and live freely within any EU nation. With a right-wing surge and anti-immigration protests occurring across the continent, political leaders may be wary about giving Turkish citizens—eighty-five million in sum—free access to live in Italy and France, for example. Tax dollars would be spent even farther from where they are extracted.
As a result, before 2022, EU bureaucrats felt little pressure to hasten negotiations. Expansion was by no means a peace project in their eyes as it was in 2004. War was nowhere near to breaking out in applicant countries, and democracy was expanding in most of them. EU membership may eventually be on the table, but immediate admittance could result in a continental economic burden or democratic catastrophe. The EU is still weary from the Greek debt crisis, and it continues to grapple with democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland. The benefits of new-member accession, the EU reasoned, was not worth the potential cost.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine uprooted this mentality across the continent. A representative of every EU state (save island-states Malta and Cyprus) has visited Kyiv. The EU has collectively sent eighty-five billion dollars in aid to Ukraine, with nearly forty billion dollars of military assistance. And most critically, members are once again calling for the aggressive expansion of the EU. In May, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive branch, made a speech advocating for fast-tracking Ukraine’s accession: “The future of Ukraine is in our Union.” Regarding Ukraine, the EU has returned to its foundational objective—bringing peace to a war-torn Europe.
Fast-tracking its entry will be difficult. Leaders certainly want to avoid accession while the war is on-going, and few can predict when the fighting will end. Yet, Europe is united in admitting Ukraine. No member has explicitly rejected this proposition, and even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, historically a Eurosceptic, has grown semi-fond of this idea.
Where Europe is divided is in its approach to other applicants. Before, it was customary to embrace the status quo, pushing accession later and later into the future without direct risk to the EU. Now, it is clear that the status quo is indeed unsatisfactory. Vladimir Putin has shown that no nation is safe from the volatile impulses of tyrants, and the European Union must attempt to guarantee stability in Eastern Europe, which, in turn, can guarantee the stability of the rest of the continent. EU leaders recognize this obligation—an obligation similar to that of 2004—and many are pushing to shorten the time frames of other countries’ accessions. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has fully flipped on the issue in just a couple of years, advocating for accessions “plus rapides.”
Macron also recognizes that which many optimistic, yet idealistic leaders fail to acknowledge: the institution of EU policy-making is broken. The EU may be the most successful unifying institution in European history, but its framework of governance can exacerbate the smallest of divisions between any of its twenty-seven member states into crippling impasse. Many decisions, like that of accession, require unanimity, and single nations can block the will of the other twenty-six countries. This is hence why leaders are so reluctant to bring up accession. Creating the necessary economic and democratic conditions in the applicant nation is not the hard part—garnering the political will of all EU members is. A pro-Russia party recently came in first in Slovakia’s general elections, and Poland has also quarreled with Ukraine over grain exports, vowing to stop sending weapons. As it stands, unanimity in admitting Ukraine is unlikely for the time being.
To solve this chokepoint, Macron, who some call France’s most pro-EU president, and other leaders have commissioned a document which outlines several reforms to the institutional structure of the EU, most prominently of which is the creation of a multi-tiered Europe. A full implementation of his plan is Europe’s best approach to solve the debacle of accession.
Currently, while there are countless asterisks that pepper EU treaties, official members are generally equal in terms of rights, obligations to the EU, and levels of integration with each other. Policies passed by the EU assemblies apply to all member states, and the EU has the same level of regulatory autonomy in each member.
Macron’s multi-tiered Europe would change that. Already Europe is somewhat multi-tiered, as some states use the Euro and others do not. States like Norway and Iceland opt into the EU’s free trade area while declining full EU membership, maintaining control over the regulation of national industries. The new plan would in essence add a new tier: the European Political Community. Members of the EPC would not be subject to EU law or have access to the single market. Instead, these states would be united in discussing policy in areas of shared interest, with various institutions and a budget to mobilize these conversations. Some have suggested that non-European countries could join the EPC as well, including those in Mediterranean Africa.
The benefits of an EPC could be enormous. Von der Leyen has repeatedly called for “merit-based” accession to the Union, so if current members aren’t willing to immediately accept candidates that haven’t met certain economic or democratic benchmarks, the EPC could be a temporary compromise. More conversation would by nature stimulate more interconnectedness, which could catalyze progress towards reading said benchmarks. Holdout nations like Slovakia and Poland may also be more willing to admit Ukraine to the EU should they and their populations have a sense of what the nation may be like as more than a mere ally.
Critics worry that the implementation of Macron’s plan would institutionalize a class divide between European states. This is fair criticism. Applicants aren’t applying to be members of the EPC—they’re applying to be members of the European Union, reaping the stability and economic benefits it provides. The EPC would certainly be a step in the right direction (as opposed to being fully outside EU purview), but it has been interpreted as a polite means to decline membership to prospective nations.
The commissioned document recognizes and addresses this criticism, suggesting further institutional reforms to facilitate accession of up to ten new member states. With many EU leaders citing a need to expand the Union’s borders by 2030, the EPC is offered as a temporary, transitional body for applicant countries before the EU can pass necessary reforms to grant them official membership status.
Primarily, the proposed reforms would eliminate the unanimity requirement for various policy categories, including security policy, taxation, and, notably, accession. Of course, nations that utilize this loophole to hold the EU at a standstill will protest at this change. The document addresses this by enumerating various concessions, including capping members of various assemblies, guaranteeing sovereignty in certain regulatory areas, and establishing dialogue between local and EU courts. It also redefines the “majority” needed for directives to pass, increasing the influence of less-populous states. Germany and France are leading the charge on these reforms, so this last concession would placate smaller members who worry about their outsized influence.
Some voices in the EU believe charging forth with reform would distract from accession efforts. It is unclear whether members often skeptical of Brussels hegemony, such as Hungary, would even agree to anything beyond the status quo at all. Regardless, it is clear from the current political state and a decade of failed negotiation that accession would be virtually impossible without reform. Macron’s plan offers hope—the European Political Community establishes a temporary stepping stone to accession, and the demise of the single-member veto will unfetter the union’s full force in the region. A path towards passing these reforms would be perilous, but vital to solve the EU’s plague of indecisiveness.
Ironically, Macron’s EPC offers division as a solution to the EU’s brokenness. And yet, it offers unity in a world so desperately in need of mutual solidarity. The EU was founded to make peace, establish connections, and bring unity to a continent crippled by its absence. Today, war again wreaks havoc on the European people—and on the world’s people. The European Union has an opportunity to expand the unity that has brought it so much success. It has an opportunity to broaden the frontiers of collaboration and diplomacy. And it has an opportunity to reign in the villainous forces that exploit division for their own gain.
The EU has an opportunity. Will it find the courage to take it?