The enlargement of the European Union is back. And not because Brussels has suddenly rediscovered its romantic enthusiasm for the “European family,” but because Vladímir Putin and Donald Trump have done more for Europeanism in two years than several community summits in two decades. The war in Ukraine has forced the EU to look at the map, discover that the world is still a dangerous place, and accept an uncomfortable truth: either Europe expands and strengthens, or it will end up diminished between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, becoming an elegant retirement zone with impeccable environmental regulations and little geopolitical relevance.
For years, enlargement was treated in Brussels like those files that everyone considers important but can always wait for the next meeting. The Western Balkans had been parked for decades in a European waiting room decorated with vague speeches about “accession perspective.” Turkey remained an official candidate, although no one – not even Turkey – believed in such a diplomatic fiction anymore. And the EU itself seemed more concerned with regulating plastic caps than with defining its political borders.
Enlarging is no longer optional
Then came Ukraine. And with it came geopolitics, that old nuisance that many Europeans thought they had retired in 1989 along with the Berlin Wall.
The Russian invasion completely changed the debate. Suddenly, enlarging the EU stopped seeming like a bureaucratic exercise and became a matter of continental security. Because enlargement, it is worth remembering, has never been simple European altruism. Spain and Portugal joined to consolidate their democracies. The Eastern European countries joined to stabilize the continent after the Soviet collapse. And now Ukraine, Moldova, or the Balkans appear as pieces on a new strategic chessboard where Europe is trying to prevent Russia, China, or anyone with imperial ambitions from filling the void.
The paradox is delicious: for years, many European leaders distrusted expanding the Union because they feared a larger Europe would be less cohesive. Now they discover that not expanding it could make it directly irrelevant. But of course, one thing is to admit the geopolitical need to expand and quite another to pay the political, economic, and institutional bill. That's where the real European spectacle begins.
Because the EU is trapped in a monumental contradiction. All governments say they support expansion. All assure that Ukraine "belongs to the European family." All speak of historical responsibility. But when the time comes to discuss what a Union of 30 or 35 members really means, enthusiasm evaporates at bureaucratic speed.
The problem is simple: the EU already functions with difficulty at 27. With 35, it could become a kind of United Nations with better cheeses and more environmental regulations.
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When the disregard fills the glass: Europe starts to talk about sovereignty
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The most obvious example is unanimanimity. The current system allows a single state to block essential decisions. Hungary has turned it into almost an Olympic discipline. Viktor Orbán has acted in Brussels - we'll see his replacement and new apprentices - like that neighbor in the building who prevents the elevator from being installed because "the matter needs to be studied further." The result is a Union that aims to act as a geopolitical power but sometimes takes weeks to approve urgent decisions because a government decides to use the veto as a permanent negotiation tool.
Imagining that system with Ukraine, Serbia, Bosnia, Moldova, and several more candidates inside sends shivers down the spine even among the most optimistic eurocrats.
Europe wants to grow… without getting blocked
That's why the big debate is no longer whether to expand, but how to survive the expansion.
The most repeated solution involves progressively abandoning unanimity and extending qualified majority voting. That is to say: accepting that Europe can no longer function as a club where everyone must always agree to change the curtains. Germany and France defend this with less and less complexity. Other small countries fear losing influence. And there appears the eternal European dilemma: efficiency versus sovereignty, integration versus national control, pragmatism versus patriotic susceptibility.
The other great idea gaining ground is the famous "multi-speed Europe," a concept that Brussels reinvents every ten years with a different name to avoid admitting the obvious: Europeans do not all want the same Europe.
In practice, it already happens. Not everyone is in the euro. Not everyone is in Schengen. Not everyone cooperates equally in defense or immigration. The enlargement will probably consolidate this reality. There will be a more integrated core and other more flexible circles around it. Something less romantic than the old federalist vision, but surely more functional.
And, honestly, it doesn't seem like a tragedy either. The community's obsession with pretending that everyone is moving at the same pace is reminiscent of those Christmas family photos where no one wants to admit that some cousins can barely stand each other.
Furthermore, the current enlargement forces the abandonment of another European myth: the idea that joining the EU automatically solves all democratic problems. The experience with Hungary, Slovakia, now Bulgaria, and, for years, Poland, has shown that a country can fully enter the Union and then slide towards illiberal models while Brussels discovers with horror that the famous Article 7 basically serves to produce endless meetings and scarce results.
That is why the rule of law has become the new community obsession. Promising reforms before entering is no longer enough; now Brussels wants permanent monitoring mechanisms, financial conditionality, and more agile sanctions. In other words: the EU has learned, late and painfully, that distributing European funds expecting eternal democratic gratitude does not always work.
The European Bill
Meanwhile, the big financial elephant remains in the room. Ukraine is not exactly Luxembourg. Its entry would completely alter the European budget, the Common Agricultural Policy, and cohesion funds. Several member states would go from receiving money to contributing it. And few things generate less European enthusiasm than discovering that there will be more to pay.
The European Commission is beginning to discreetly float some solutions: new own resources, common debt in the style of Next Generation, reform of the CAP, gradual integration and staggered access to funds. Translated into real political language: nobody knows exactly how to finance future enlargement without causing several national nervous breakdowns.
Neither accession nor waiting room
Even so, gradual integration seems the most sensible option. The old model – decades of waiting followed by full accession – is exhausted. Ukraine cannot wait eternally in a geopolitical anteroom while fighting a war. And the Balkans cannot continue listening to European promises for another twenty years without frustration growing.
The idea would be to progressively integrate candidates into specific areas: energy, single market, European programs, security, infrastructure, telecommunications, or defense. Less final ceremony and more practical participation from the start. A kind of “accession by real chapters” instead of by diplomatic rhetoric.
This raises an uncomfortable but inevitable question: are we still talking about enlargement in the classic sense or rather about new forms of associative integration? Probably both. Full accession, based on the acquis communautaire, will remain the formal destination. But between the eternal waiting room and immediate membership, an intermediate ground emerges. Perhaps the great European novelty is not abandoning enlargement, but ceasing to understand it as a binary act.
And this logic is already beginning to be reflected in concrete political proposals. In Brussels and some European capitals, discussions are underway on how to offer Ukraine gradual participation in common institutions and policies before full accession. The issue is not only legal or budgetary, but strategic: Europe wants to integrate Kyiv long before it is ready to admit it fully. Enlargement thus ceases to appear as a final administrative act to become a political and security process.
Regarding the candidates, it is advisable to avoid an individual catalog because the landscape is chaotic enough on its own. There are relatively advanced countries, others trapped in territorial conflicts, some with serious corruption problems, and several where Brussels suspects that the European enthusiasm of their elites is compatible with rather intimate friendships with Moscow or Beijing. Ukraine symbolizes the historical and emotional challenge; Moldova represents strategic fragility; the Balkans mix European weariness, nationalist tensions, and exhausted patience; and Turkey remains in a category of its own: officially a candidate, politically impossible, and diplomatically awkward.
European public opinion reflects all these contradictions well. Citizens overwhelmingly support Ukraine, especially since the Russian invasion. But when enlargement is discussed in the abstract, doubts arise: fear of economic cost, of immigration, of losing internal cohesion, or of importing new conflicts.
And they are not illogical. Enlargement always redistributes power, money, and influence. It did so in 2004 and will do so again now. The European political center of gravity has already shifted eastward. Germany and Poland are gaining strategic weight. France is trying not to lose prominence by constantly reinventing concepts like "strategic autonomy," and the South fears the abandonment of threats in the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, Brussels is desperately seeking a narrative that combines geopolitics, democratic values, and financial viability without provoking an electoral mutiny.
Because that is another problem: the EU continues to explain enlargement as if it were drafting a technical report for experts in community law. And people, understandably, disconnect at the third reference to the "acquis."
Perhaps a simpler and more honest explanation would be needed. Europe is expanding because the world has become dangerous. Because leaving gray areas on the continent is more expensive than integrating them. Because an aging and fragmented Union will hardly survive alone among gigantic continental powers. And because, despite all its flaws, the EU remains one of the few political spaces where democracy, prosperity, and the rule of law maintain a certain capacity for attraction.
The enlargement will not magically solve European problems. It will probably add new ones. There will be more tensions, more endless negotiations, and more "historic" summits ending at five in the morning. But it may also force the EU to do something it has been avoiding for too long: decide what it wants to be. And perhaps therein lies the great irony of this whole process. Europe has been discussing for years whether it should deepen or enlarge. Putin and Trump have brutally resolved the debate: if Europe wants to continue existing as a relevant political actor, it will have to do both at the same time.