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Opinion | How the EU can reinvigorate itself and go beyond being western Europe’s old boys’ club
- Enlargement sceptics like French President Emmanuel Macron fail to see that the European Union has lost its ability to inspire
- A new wave of enlargement that includes Ukraine and the Western Balkans could reinstate the EU as a model of how regionalism can counteract great power pressures
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Speaking in Strasbourg recently, French President Emmanuel Macron laid out a new vision of European integration while stressing that it would take “decades” for Ukraine to join the European Union proper.
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This contrasts starkly with the optimism of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has repeatedly expressed a desire for Ukraine to become a full member as soon as possible.
Macron clearly remains an enlargement sceptic. He vetoed plans in 2019 to open accession talks – the last stage before full membership – with Albania and North Macedonia.
Macron’s attitude is emblematic of the enlargement fatigue that has gripped many “old members” since the mega enlargement in the 2000s, when the EU grew from 15 to 27 members.
The fatigue was generated by the mass migration from east to west, the apparent democratic backsliding in some new member states (especially Poland and Hungary), and the (erroneous) notion that enlargement contributed to the economic crises that gripped the EU in the 2010s.
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3 European leaders travel to Kyiv war zone in bold show of support to Ukrainian leader Zelensky
3 European leaders travel to Kyiv war zone in bold show of support to Ukrainian leader Zelensky
In truth, the mega enlargement must go down as one of the EU’s greatest achievements; undoubtedly its greatest since the Cold War. Forget the hyperbole of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize and the EU’s self-congratulatory narrative of presiding over six decades of peace on the continent, including as the European Economic Community (somehow forgetting its comically bad handling of Yugoslavia’s disintegration).
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