by Dimitar Bechev
The EU loves to talk about enlargement—whether it can deliver is still anyone’s guess.
Politics in key countries like France does not augur well for membership hopefuls like Montenegro, Albania, or Moldova. Ditto the chatter that Ukraine might have to swallow limited access to the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy. But the European Commission deserves three cheers for continuing to think creatively about how to make enlargement work.
The institution’s latest proposal doubles down on market convergence as an interim step to membership. And, to make that offer more credible, it proposes tighter timelines with target dates for accession as an add-on.
If these proposals are implemented, they will de facto create something that has been the talk of the town in Brussels lately: associate EU membership. Yet, they risk failing to convince countries such as Serbia, Turkey, and Georgia to stop hedging, turn their backs to the likes of China and Russia, and cast their lot in with the EU.
Fundamentally, the proposal isn’t entirely new. Frontloading single market benefits is an evergreen in enlargement. It is an explicit goal of the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans, adopted by the commission in 2023. Integrating countries into the single market through alignment with EU law is also the vision behind the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area agreements the EU has signed with Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia. But if membership is to be a long and drawn-out prospect, then prioritizing market integration—including the freedom of movement of the kind enjoyed by European Economic Area (EEA) members Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein—could boost growth on all sides and forge closer political and institutional bonds.
The current push for gradual integration is rooted in pretty much the same logic. In addition to frictionless trade through the single market, it foresees access to policies and research programs too.
The commission’s latest ideas come after member states killed plans for so-called reverse accession earlier this year. That was the concept through which a country could join as a member without drawing the full economic benefits and with limitations of its voting rights. In that process, candidate countries’ accession to full membership rights would be contingent on clearing hurdles and being assessed for compliance, while formally staying on the inside of the EU. Such plans did not go very far—not least because a number of policymakers saw them as too costly. Going through the pain of ratifying of an accession treaty only for alignment with the EU to be limited did not seem like a decent offer.
But the issue of compliance with the union’s standards remains critical in the current proposal. Brussels has been careful to point out that market access comes with strings attached. The growth plan links financial transfers to the rule of law, whereas the new scheme goes a couple of steps further by conditioning accession to the single market as a whole to judicial reform, anti-corruption, government accountability, and the like—on top of regulatory alignment. Furthermore, the plan posits that benefits could be withdrawn in case a country starts backsliding. It is a bid to revive, at least partly, the EU’s normative power, which has lost some of its former glimmer.
There are nagging legal questions, too. Would, for instance, non-members accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ)? EEA members do not—they have the European Free Trade Association Court. Neither does Switzerland, which participates in the single market via a web of bilateral agreements with the EU. But should Moldova, Albania, or Ukraine converge with Brussels’s legislation, going further than the EEA? Chances are that their judicial systems would come under ECJ jurisdiction, too. How that would work legally and constitutionally is yet to be seen. What may lie at the end of the road is the much-discussed associate membership, an arrangement where a country is deeply integrated into the union with some voice in its institutions and the option of joining at a later date.
A key theme in the new gradual integration proposal appears to be buying into the EU’s increasingly sombre outlook on geoeconomics. U.S. tariffs, China’s alleged unfair trading practices and penchant for coercive dependence, and the general swing toward protectionism in the global economy have deepened the sense of vulnerability in Europe. To quote the commission document: “Participation in sensitive sectors must be accompanied by cooperation on investment screening, export controls, sanctions implementation, and the protection of sensitive technologies.” The plan links access to “strategic alignment, critical dependencies, and the capacity to manage risks to infrastructure and supply chains.” A country could be excluded from a policy or project if it is in bed with China, Russia, or another third party seen as a risk.
It is clear that the targets of these conditions are candidates which are diversifying their foreign policy away from the EU. Countries like Serbia, Turkey, and Georgia do not participate in sanctions against Russia and have been courting closer trade and investment ties with China. Yet, it is highly doubtful this group will jump on the bandwagon to exchange foreign policy flexibility for single market access or even membership lite. They will want to continue having their cake and eating it. Hedgers already benefit from a great deal of access to the EU, in Turkey’s case even to a customs union. They will probably calculate that the costs of realignment toward Europe outweigh the benefits. In such a scenario, the dividing lines between neighbors leaning toward the EU and those happy to sit on the fence may deepen.
Gradual integration is not really a choice. It is the status quo rooted in political reality. It is incumbent on the commission to turn necessity into virtue. But to do that, it has to signal to candidate countries that there will be no shortcuts to the single market. You need some tough love and consistency if the step-by-step accession process is to deliver on its promises.
*Published first on Carnegie - Strategic Europe
By: N. Peter Kramer