Ukraine is an exceptional case among the countries that are applying for the next enlargement of the European Union. The Russian invasion has placed it as a priority, which has triggered comparative grievances among the rest of the candidates but has relaunched its integration processes.
In 1993 – the same year that the Maastricht treaty came into force and that the process to achieve the internal market that the Single European Act had facilitated was completed – a European Council held in the capital of Denmark approved the rules that would govern from then the extensions. The integration process was very different thirty years ago. To begin with, the Union still called itself the European Community, there were only twelve member states sitting at the Council table and the president of the Commission was Jacques Delors. Spain and Portugal had not even finished the transitional periods contained in their act of accession and Austria, Finland and Sweden had not yet joined. But the so-called Copenhagen criteria were not thinking about Western countries but rather about the wave of future candidates that were announced in the East, recently freed from the yoke of the Kremlin.
There was never great enthusiasm for the idea of welcoming economically backward countries without accredited democratic credentials after almost half a century of communism. What's more, its own statehood was fragile and, if when the Berlin Wall fell the concept of Eastern Europe encompassed eight states, in 1993 it exceeded twenty; Consider that that same year Czechoslovakia had been divided in two, a Yugoslavia at war was already in five fragments and would soon reach seven, and in the European part of the former USSR there were nine republics that had just broken with Russia. Community institutions and leaders knew that they had a historical (and perhaps geopolitical, although at the time neither the word nor the concern was fashionable) responsibility to facilitate the Europeanization of those who had just regained their freedom. However, the agreement reached in Copenhagen shows that they were also – and perhaps above all – concerned with protecting the supranational project.
The enlargement criteria that have been in force since then are famous for what they require of candidates: that they be democracies that respect human rights and the division of powers, that they have a functional market economy and that they have made their own the immense “acquis community” of secondary policies and regulations approved since the 1950s. But these elements, of legal appearance, are not exactly designed to provide a roadmap that facilitates negotiations after technical monitoring of compliance, but rather to give those who are already members the ability to control the process and decide accordingly. politically (and unanimously) when they decide or not to enlarge the European Union. For that same reason, they also said that no new entry would occur until the EU itself had sufficient “absorption capacity,” deliberately leaving undetermined what that notion means.
Furthermore, and this is uniquely relevant for Ukraine, ten years later they decided to define how far Europe went so that all the ex-Soviet republics – except the three Baltic ones that were about to enter at that time – would be left off the map of future membership. Thus, in 2003, the so-called European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) was born, which, as its name indicates, distinguishes between those called to be part of the house (and there were all the Balkans and even Turkey) from those who are simply neighbors (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine and the three of the South Caucasus – Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).
After the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the EU has been overwhelmed by the need to affirm its support for Kyiv and, in a radical turn, has rectified that pretension maintained for twenty years that left the country now invaded (and its pro-Western neighbors Moldova and Georgia) in a second division status. Ukraine applied for membership in February 2022, just at the start of the war. It was granted the status of candidate country only four months later and in December 2023, during the semester of Spanish presidency of the Council, it was decided to start negotiations. The revitalization of the enlargement policy – which until Putin decided to invade his neighbor was languishing in sad negotiations over the name of Macedonia or the congenital instability of Bosnia – certainly represents fresh air and relegitimization. And the EU would not only have emerged victorious from the challenge of Brexit, but now sees how whoever heroically symbolizes the best European values has the EU as the main objective of his national project. However, although some foreign ministers, such as the Polish one, want Ukraine to be given quick entry, the vast majority of capitals do not want to offer it any shortcut to the demanding criteria, and the most Western ones also suggest that “Absorptive capacity” requires prior or parallel reforms in institutions, policies and the budget.
Beyond immediate solidarity and the technical issues of compliance with the “acquis communautaire”, processing this expansion represents a transcendent decision for the history of integration with consequences that are difficult to foresee in the medium and long term. That is why it is necessary to take into account a series of underlying considerations that make Ukraine an exceptional case compared to other candidates.
1. Comparative torts
In fact, the first consideration refers precisely to the danger of generating such grievances with respect to countries that have been waiting for a long time and that would be enormously frustrated if a third party that has just arrived at the negotiations overtakes them. It is true that enlargement always entails considerable delays and requires sustained effort. The example of Spain, despite what Radek Sikorski says, is instructive: the country requested access to the then European Economic Community in 1977, and its accession did not occur until eight and a half years later, when it had been assured that it was in conditions to comply with every last comma of the “acquis”. But the truth is that North Macedonia (the candidate that has been negotiating the longest if Turkey is not included) is already approaching twenty years old and has no accession horizon in sight.
For this reason, the EU is risking its credibility in the Balkans. If Ukraine's candidacy is not interpreted as an incentive for the Western Balkans to accelerate convergence with the Copenhagen criteria, but as an instrument of privilege that bypasses them, the result will be a loss of reputation and influence for the EU. Therefore, progress with Kyiv (or Chisinau) cannot be to the detriment of the Balkan capitals. So far this danger has been avoided, and the Ukrainian dossier has rather served to revive the old candidacies, except for the Turkish one. But the fear of grievance is still there.
2. Post-war economic reconstruction
Although it is still early to determine when the war (which actually began in 2014) will end, it is already possible to begin to calculate the immense destruction it is causing in Ukraine. According to the World Bank, Ukrainian GDP contracted up to 50% in 2022 alone and its economy has continued to suffer strangulation in 2023, practically isolated from access to the sea, as well as the damage caused by the Russian occupation, which in February 2024 covers 18% of the surface of Ukraine (just over 20% of Spain, to give an approximate measure). Ukraine was not even starting from an encouraging situation. The GDP per capita before the pandemic did not reach 3,500 euros: almost a third of that of Bulgaria, currently the poorest Member State in the Union. Ukraine is also burdened, as Adam Tooze has pointed out, by a trajectory of economic stagnation that has no parallel in the rest of the region (nor, for that matter, in Russia). At the same time – and as has been discovered in the context of the Russian invasion – it is an agricultural giant, whose access to the European Union would require a profound redesign of the Common Agricultural Policy. It is also worth remembering that the slowness – if not absence – of the reforms in this direction were already a source of tensions with the International Monetary Fund and observers who sympathize with Ukrainian aspirations.
To achieve the minimum socio-economic stability necessary to enable the enlargement process, Ukraine will require an extensive program of economic reconstruction. In this scenario, multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank can play a relevant role and, if the Republican party does not insist otherwise, the United States. But the consequence if Ukraine joins the EU is that they will be the rest of the European partners who deploy the main support measures. Promoting a program of this magnitude will be a demanding mission, given that the EU is also going through a worrying situation, the result of the economic slowdown and the growth of inflation. It is difficult to conceive an assistance program on par with what Ukraine will demand if a much more ambitious reform of European fiscal rules than the one decided at the end of 2023 to provide the Union with a greater economic cohesion.
In any case, and in view of close precedents, the risk of abandoning Ukraine to its fate in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis is too great. Moscow's own authoritarian drift from the late 1990s onwards occurred in the context of a socio-economic crisis that devastated Russian society and to which Europe and the United States, far from providing constructive solutions, contributed by prescribing a transition to the market economy at forced pace. It is also worth remembering that the seed of the European integration process was an economic reconstruction that would serve to put an end to a past marked by wars and enmity. Assistance to Ukraine when the war ends must be understood as an integral part of the EU's raison d'être.
3. Redefine a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture
Before 2022, the situation in Ukraine was sometimes presented as a clash between Moscow and Kyiv, in which Brussels would only be involved as the headquarters of NATO. The EU was challenged by the conflict, but it has already been said that Ukraine was considered only a neighbor and, therefore, from a certain distance. Russia, on the other hand, would consider NATO's eastern advance more threatening than that of the EU, especially as the latter gains autonomy from the US. The role of France and Germany as guarantors of the Minsk agreements contributed to this perception – more schematic than precise – of the EU as an actor unrelated to the conflict, or in any case interested in mediating between the opposing parties.
The Russian invasion has completely killed that narrative. The EU intervened in the conflict with a decisiveness unexpected by both its critics and even a large part of its defenders. He managed to approve twelve consecutive packages of sanctions and, with specific exceptions, the member states sent weapons to Ukraine. The admission of Ukraine as a candidate state is part of this logic of exceptional support. We must not forget that Russian coercion towards the country dates back not only to Kyiv's attempts to access NATO - with the invitation extended to Ukraine and Georgia during the 2008 Bucharest summit as a turning point in relations between Moscow and the Alliance–, but to the EU itself, with the Association agreement proposed around 2013 as a trigger for the Euromaidan and the crisis of 2014.
Recent experience shows that the paradigm of Wandel durch Handel (change through trade) with which the EU – and particularly its German economic locomotive – has approached the rest of the world has been outdated or, at least, must be reviewed. . Strengthening commercial ties and trusting that economic interdependence will always be able to guarantee dialogue has proven to be a fragile strategy. In relations with Moscow, it has only served to aggravate Europe's dependence on its gas and postpone the energy transition. The positive part is that the war has served to think about European foreign action from now on within a comprehensive approach, which takes into consideration issues that go far beyond commercial relations.
As much as a firm and cohesive EU is necessary, the stabilization of the eastern neighborhood will be essential for Ukrainian accession to be considered with a minimum of seriousness. This implies, in the medium and long term, getting a relationship with Moscow back on track that currently does not offer any area in which to collaborate. Russia will maintain important pressure tools and it will be necessary to ensure that these do not serve to prevent the outcome that the EU wants. But member states will have to keep in mind that their guideline of conduct cannot be to look for what annoys Vladimir Putin the most on each occasion. This is not the time to propose a reconciliation with Russia, but to reflect on the patches and shortcomings of a Euro-Atlantic security order that has been adrift for several decades, partly also due to the unilateral drift of North American foreign policy in 2001. -2008 and, above all, 2017-2020. That Donald Trump can return to the White House in 2025 is not, in that sense, anything positive.
In any case, a serious commitment to the Ukrainian candidacy would assume that the EU needs to develop a more cohesive foreign and defense policy. In a context in which NATO has regained its attractiveness among a large part of its partners, the debates on “European strategic autonomy” assume an interpretation of this concept compatible rather than in conflict with the Atlantic Alliance. All in all, the EU must be able to speak with its own voice on international security and defense issues. Especially when it cannot be ruled out that, in the not too distant future, and faced with another White House openly hostile to multilateralism, the EU will be forced to react hastily.
4. A common European foreign and security policy
Finally, the fourth consideration refers to the need to deepen the integration process itself. It has already been mentioned that the prospect of Ukraine's accession requires greater fiscal ambition, reviewing the current agricultural policy and rethinking a common foreign and security policy that was not designed for a world where the use of force is once again decisive. But it would be a serious mistake to settle for a patch in the seams of the suit that the EU now wears. The quantitative and qualitative impact of another major enlargement towards Eastern Europe that includes Ukraine – which would become the fifth most important State – requires new institutional, budgetary and competency arrangements. An EU with more than 35 members (two thirds of which would be east of Berlin and seven as neighbors of Russia) needs resources that do not jeopardize its very survival, given the risk that in the future the rejection of additional transfers of sovereignty.
From the European Parliament, from France and Germany in particular and, in general, from the most Western states – which represent two thirds of the population – there is an insistence on the need for any future accession to be accompanied by an improvement in the capacity to act. of the Union. This means, at a minimum, eliminating the requirement for unanimity in foreign policy (but also in other areas such as tax harmonization); establish a solid financial framework with common revenues and spending on European public goods (defence, climate, innovation); allow differentiated integration so that recalcitrant capitals do not prevent those who want to go further in certain areas from advancing; and, finally, strengthen the tools at the disposal of the common institutions to defend democracy and the division of powers within the member states.
This last dimension of the rule of law is very relevant for Ukraine since its current democratic quality is far from the European average (the latest edition of The Economist Intelligence Unit classifies it as a hybrid regime, immediately behind Tunisia and Liberia). The unpleasant experiences that Poland and Hungary have experienced announce the long road that remains for Ukraine and other candidates until the conditions for joining the EU are met.
The legitimate fears raised by the prospect of Ukraine's premature accession in the economic, security and functioning of the EU should not lead to dragging its feet with its candidacy but, on the contrary, investing efforts to help it achieve be ready soon. There is no zero-sum dilemma between broadening and deepening. The experience of many accessions – where the case of Spain stands out – shows that newcomers can make very valuable contributions and give new impetus to integration. It is true that in the case of the Visegrad Group the balance is more debatable, and the populist Euroscepticism that dominates there makes the 2004 enlargement judged with bright lights in prosperity, stability or security, but also with important shadows.
The way in which different countries of the former Warsaw Pact have gone, following the approach of political scientists Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, from a process of “imitation” of the rest of the West to feeling “revulsion” for what they consider an excessively liberal drift of their societies is a premonitory example. To avoid another disappointing outcome, Ukrainian governments will have to make enormous efforts to depoliticize the judicial system, curb the influence of oligarchs in national politics, and ensure more inclusive governance, in line with the seven thematic proposals called for by the Commission for two years.
The success of this roadmap and the association that Ukrainians ultimately make between Europe and their freedom will determine that their accession can help weaken the illiberal forces that today dominate the central-eastern scenario and that in the future Kyiv prefers to push forward. European construction and not be a hindrance obsessed by its national sovereignty.
Ignacio Molina is principal researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Jorge Tamames is a researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute and a doctoral student – political sciences – at University College Dublin.
