EU enlargement is again in full swing. On June 15, the Council took the long-anticipated decision to open the fundamentals cluster for Moldova and Ukraine, marking the actual start of their accession negotiations. Montenegro closed yet another 2 negotiation chapters on the same day, getting ever closer to its objective to finalise negotiations by the end of 2026. Debates on how to facilitate enlargement on the EU side have equally received a boost in recent weeks. For years, these discussions were largely driven by the expert community, advocating ideas such as the often-cited staged integration proposal. Now, the European Commission and Member States are taking centre stage in the debate. In February, the Commission floated a reversed integration model for Ukraine: membership first, integration later. As Member States rejected the idea quite firmly, enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos challenged capitals to put forward their own ideas. Challenge accepted, so must have thought Germany, France and the Benelux countries, producing various non-papers. This brief assesses their proposals, asking whether they can genuinely move enlargement – and the EU itself – forward.
About the Author:
Wouter Zweers is a Research Fellow at Clingendael