Two founders of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics think tank, Hans Kribbe and Luuk van Middelaar, set out the “difficult choices” that the European Union will have to make if it is to function with 36 Member States, in an essay published at the end of September in the run-up to the European summit in Granada (see separate news item).
The two researchers identify five fundamental changes that EU enlargement will bring about. Firstly, the way in which decisions are taken, particularly in the EU Council, will necessarily have to be reviewed, even if, in their view, the end of unanimity is “no panacea”. The arrival of new Member States, further fragmenting the Council, should also strengthen the Commission’s ability to set the political agenda.
The EU budget will have to be thoroughly overhauled, with the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and cohesion policy each taking up more than 30% of the overall budget. The countries that will join are rural - Ukraine has more agricultural land than the surface area of Italy - and have a lower standard of living than Bulgaria, the EU country with the lowest GDP per capita. These countries will therefore be net beneficiaries of the EU budget. Whether with regard to the CAP or cohesion, it will be necessary either to increase the size of the budget or to reduce the amounts redistributed, say the two authors, who recall the ten-year transitional periods put in place in 2004 before agricultural support reached its current level.
By increasing the size of the single market, enlargement will offer new economic opportunities and strengthen the EU’s resilience, according to Mr Kribbe and Mr van Middelaar. Nevertheless, tensions are to be expected, they note, in reference to the unilateral restrictions on Ukrainian grain exports that Ukraine’s neighbouring countries have put in place. The future European citizens will seek a better-paid future in the west of the EU. Here again, as in 2004, one solution could be to introduce restrictions on the free movement of people, note the authors, pointing out that the United Kingdom did not do so at the time, before intra-EU migration became a central motivation for Brexit.
Both authors stress the importance of monitoring compliance with the fundamental values of the EU and the rule of law. In this area, the EU has more leverage in its relations with candidate countries compared to once these countries have become members. Acknowledging that strengthening the Community acquis in this area “would be difficult to achieve with all 27”, they put forward the idea of a vanguard of countries in this area, but without mentioning a possible connection to the EU budget.
In terms of security, enlargement will “probably” force the EU to rely more on the United States, say the two researchers. “Strategic linkages between NATO membership (or similarly strong security guarantees) and EU membership need to be kept in mind”, they add. They also call for territorial disputes in the Balkans, such as the status of Kosovo, to be settled pre-accession. They support the proposal by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to insert ‘confidence clauses’ into accession treaties so that a country joining the EU does not block the subsequent accession of another country in the region.
A necessary and impossible objective
Mr Kribbe and Mr van Middelaar seek the right formula to enable European leaders to achieve enlargement, an objective that is “necessary” from a geostrategic point of view, but “impossible” in its current configuration.
In their view, there are two ways of dealing with this dilemma: the first is to “play for time” which should make it possible to carry out reforms within the EU and in the countries on the road to accession, and the second is to find “alternative and creative solutions” regarding the very meaning of EU membership. In the meantime, the challenge of convincing the public cannot be ignored either.
In particular, the two researchers look at the concept of “gradual integration” being discussed at the highest political level. The idea is to achieve gradual accession by offering candidate countries visible and tangible benefits early on to ‘reward’ them for the reforms they have undertaken. In their view, this needs to go further than just participation in sectoral Community programmes such as Horizon Europe or Erasmus+. However, this idea clashes with the indivisible nature of the four freedoms of the single market, with Brexit highlighting the EU’s refusal to grant the UK segmented access to the internal market (‘cherry-picking’). Hence the idea put forward by the think tank of allowing a candidate country to take part in the Council’s ministerial meetings and in the work of the European agencies, but without voting rights.
Read the think tank’s essay: https://aeur.eu/f/8uo (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)