Enlargement or Paralysis: Can the EU Still Grow and Govern?
What are the processes, trends, opportunities, and challenges that come with EU enlargement?
The admission of new members has always been central to EU policy. It helped the Union create one of the wealthiest regions in the world, and has been an effective tool in limiting conflicts, increasing European collaboration, and allowing democracy to develop after the fall of the Soviet Union.
After 2013, however, the process of enlargement largely stalled. Since Croatia’s entry into the EU, negotiations for a number of candidates effectively froze, while other countries implemented necessary reforms very slowly; Montenegro, the only country to make fast progress in the accession process, will likely not join before 2028.
As the war in Ukraine progresses and support from the United States fades, the EU has the possibility of becoming a viable alternative to other great powers, and one of the tools at its disposal to achieve this is the accession of new members. This analysis considers the economic, legal, and geopolitical environment concerning EU enlargement to assess how future expansion of the Union could take place.
How Does EU Enlargement Work?
The legal foundation of EU enlargement is Article 49 of the Treaty on the European Union. It permits any “European State” that respects human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and human rights in a tolerant society, and is committed to promoting them, to apply for membership. “European” is not defined solely by geography, but rather as a political, historical, and constitutional quality.
Although the process is often presented as a sequence of technical assessments, it is ultimately an intergovernmental decision; every existing member state must accept the applicant, and no country has an automatic right to membership within a predetermined period.
The applicant must have stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and respect for and protection of minorities. Economically, it must possess a functioning market economy capable of coping with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. Moreover, the EU requires the applicant to accept the obligations of membership, align itself with EU law, and possess the institutional capacity to implement and enforce that law effectively.
The Accession Process
Before applying, an aspiring country will normally have developed a structured relationship with the EU through an association or trade agreement. In the Western Balkans, the principal framework is constituted by the Stabilization and Association Agreements. Such arrangements promote political dialogue, trade integration, regulatory approximation and regional cooperation with the EU, and therefore facilitate integration.
After the applicant state submits an application letter to the Council, the latter asks the Commission to examine its political system, economy, legislation, institutions and capacities and draft an avis on the application. Depending on the results of the avis, the European Council then decides whether to grant the applicant official candidate status. This decision requires consensus from the member states; a single government can prevent advancement even where the Commission considers that the technical conditions have been substantially fulfilled.
Supposing that the applicant has earned official candidate status, the first step of the accession negotiations would be the screening process: a delegation of the Commission and of the candidate country meet to explain the points of the EU acquis, and the candidate’s standing in each of the chapters that compose it. The meetings lead to the drafting of cluster screening reports, which evaluate the country’s degree of preparedness, inform on its plans, and propose preliminary indications of likely issues for negotiations.
Screening and negotiations concern different parts of the EU system. The acquis communautaire is divided into thirty-five negotiating chapters: Thirty-three are grouped into six clusters which cover fundamentals, the internal market, competitiveness and inclusive growth, the green agenda and sustainable connectivity, resources and cohesion, and external relations. The cluster on fundamentals is considered the most important one: It includes judicial reform, human rights, justice and security, statistics, and the presence of a functioning and strong market economy, among others. It is the first cluster to be opened and the last to be closed, and progress in this cluster determines the overall pace of negotiations.
The Council must decide unanimously whether to open a cluster for negotiations. Once a cluster is opened, the candidate submits its negotiating position, which outlines how it will align with EU law and procedures, whether any divergences remain, and whether transitional arrangements are needed. The Commission prepares an EU common position, and negotiations proceed based on these two documents. A chapter is usually closed when the candidate manages to meet the closing benchmarks set by the EU, which triggers a recommendation by the Commission that must be unanimously agreed upon by the Member States. This closure is provisional, however, and not definitive: any chapter can be re-opened for further negotiations if the implementation of the requirements is not considered sufficient, or if new conditions change the situation that concerns it.
Once all chapters have been provisionally closed, the Commission gives its final opinion on whether the country is ready for membership. The final approval is up to the EU Council and the EU Parliament: Member States must unanimously approve the enlargement, while the Parliament must approve with an absolute majority. The remaining negotiations settle matters such as institutional representation, budgetary contributions, transitional periods, safeguard clauses, and eventual technical adaptations to the EU treaties. Finally, an accession treaty is drafted and signed by every member state. The candidate becomes a member after the accession date, provided that the treaty has been constitutionally ratified by every member state.
Before the accession date, the candidate is said to be an acceding state: it gains observer status in EU institutions, and its benchmarks are controlled by the EU to ensure that they are satisfied.
Public Opinion on Enlargement
Officially, the EU asserts that enlargement is a strategic investment in Europe’s long-term peace, stability, and prosperity, and is crucial for increasing the EU’s influence on the global stage.
Public opinion in the EU is generally favorable to enlargement; more than half of respondents in a recent EU Commission survey have shown support, compared to the 38% who showed skepticism of the policy. Approval of enlargement is especially high for Nordic countries, as well as among younger respondents and more educated groups. The main issues people cite regarding enlargement are uncontrolled migration, increased risk of corruption, terrorism, organized crime, and higher costs to European taxpayers.
Interestingly, support for accession of the current candidates seems somewhat unrelated to their fulfillment of membership conditions: the most favored country for accession is Ukraine, although only 52% of the respondents in the same recent survey would approve accession, even after membership conditions were met. The least favored country is Türkiye, with only 37% of respondents supporting its accession.
A Shift in Policy?
Enlargement has generally occurred in bouts of expansion, periods of a few years in which multiple countries entered the EU, followed by relative stillness. The last four expansions occurred in 1995, 2004 (in which ten countries joined), 2007, and 2013. Negotiations generally closed 1 to 3 years before the official accession dates.
Since 2013, the EU has seen a period of stagnancy with regard to enlargement. Although there are currently nine candidate countries, only four have provisionally closed negotiation chapters.
Except for Montenegro, candidates are still far from accession. A recent referendum in Iceland confirmed its desire not to join the Union. Albania has closed three chapters, Serbia has closed two, and Türkiye is likewise frozen at 1 chapter because of issues on democracy and the rule of law. Negotiations with Georgia are locked for the same reason.
Identikit of a Candidate
The current candidates for EU accession are based in the Western Balkans and in Eastern Europe, with the exception of Türkiye. Their median GDP per capita sat at around $9,400 (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2024), much lower than the EU average GDP per capita of $43,135 in the same year. EU candidates scored between 52nd and 118th in the WJP Rule of Law Rank, with the median being 70th (Bosnia and Herzegovina); and between 103rd and 50th in the EIU democracy global ranking (2024), with the median being 71st (Moldova). In comparison, Italy ranks 34th in the WJP Rule of Law ranking and 37th in the EIU democracy global ranking 2024. Many of the current candidates are commonly listed as hybrid regimes rather than democracies, including Serbia and Moldova.
How Trade Arrangements May Limit Accession Incentives
EU membership has outsized economic advantages compared with normal trade relations. Both candidate and EU member states stand to gain from aspects such as the growth of the internal market, easier investment, and better competition. In truth, both the desire to advance legal assimilation with the candidates and the search for higher economic integration before accession have led the EU to develop a thick network of arrangements with the current candidates. To a lesser degree, this replicates the economic effects of membership, reducing the residual gains that both current members and candidates would obtain from full accession.
The Western Balkan candidates are partially integrated into the EU economic system through the Stabilization and Association Agreements (SAAs), which provide broad goods liberalizations, limited services advantages and regulatory integration. The SAAs eliminate customs duties and quantitative restrictions on almost all industrial goods, provide preferential access for agricultural and fishery goods, and increase customs cooperation. Trade with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine occurs under the Association Agreement. These countries form a so-called Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) with the EU. The three DCFTAs require approximation in areas like technical regulations and product standards, sanitary rules for food, customs and trade facilitation, competition, intellectual property, state aid, and energy and sustainable development obligations. Although the DCFTAs require the applying countries to enact legislation in accordance with the EU, this does not eliminate customs duties and checks. This limits the advantages of these deals, making them more of a tool to advance systemic integration with the EU.
All the Western Balkan candidate countries are extremely connected to the EU economically. The EU share of these countries’ total goods traded is between 42.5% and 63.5%, indicating high levels of trade connection and potential for further growth through cooperation. For the Eastern European candidates, these values are often higher. Thanks to the DCFTAs, the EU’s share of Ukraine’s total goods trade is around 65%, while for Moldova this value is 56%.
Türkiye has large trade relations with the EU, with the EU accounting for more than 45% of its exports. The customs union between the two parties requires Türkiye to align with EU competition rules, customs rules, common commercial policy, intellectual property, and specific product legislation. While other EU-candidate countries’ trade arrangements have strict controls on the origin of goods to determine eligibility for preferential trade, the arrangement with Türkiye avoids most requirements, allowing for deep integration of markets and supply chains between the two blocs.
Ultimately, these frameworks can eliminate most customs duties, tariffs, and costs that may otherwise limit trade with the EU. At the same time, there often remain outsized bureaucratic hurdles that limit effective integration with the Internal Market.
The Real Effect of Accessions on the EU Budget
Although the candidate countries are not EU members, they currently receive assistance amounting to about 14 billion Euros per year from the EU, with the objective of helping in the implementation of the necessary reforms. Assistance comes in the form of conditional grants and guaranteed loans (which amount to two-thirds of total assistance). These funds in the Western Balkans are provided through IPA III and the Western Balkans Growth and Reform Facility; For Ukraine and Moldova, special facilities govern funding allocation. The grants provided are usually conditional on reaching some benchmarks and implementing reform.
The EU aids its current members mainly through cohesion funds — based on population, regional income and the gap with the EU average — as well as the CAP and rural funds, which are generally based on agricultural land area. Cohesion funds currently have a ceiling of 2.3% of GDP, which would decrease the expenditure in support of the new members, keeping costs contained. CAP and rural funds do not have a maximum ceiling.
If the candidates were to join the EU, the amount of funding net of contributions that they would receive would generally be 4-5 times larger than the grants received currently: this is a major incentive for these countries to reach accession, but it can be a price for their legal and geopolitical independence that their governments may be reluctant to accept. Increased net funding to new member countries would be an unpopular policy in the older, more developed Western European states. These countries would necessarily face a decrease in the net fiscal benefits of being member states, with the alternative being the EU taking on more debt to repay in the future.
For Ukraine, the issue of EU monetary assistance is outsized. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, it has benefitted not only from preferred trade exemptions with the EU, but especially from grants and loan assistance. If it were to become a member, its large agricultural sector would make it the biggest beneficiary of CAP assistance in the EU (assuming current CAP allocation rules were applied). According to recent estimates by the CEPS, the CAP budget would increase by 25% solely because of this. If Ukraine were to join the EU, negotiations on this topic would likely lead to a phase-in of CAP funding or special facilities for agricultural policy in Ukraine, rather than full support under the current rules.
Overall, except for Ukraine and Türkiye, the net effect of accession of the current candidates on the EU budget would be modest, and financially it could occur even under MFFs that do not explicitly cover accession events.
EU-30+ May Struggle to Remain as Effective
Enlargement is feasible, but it would magnify the bureaucratic problems already visible in the current EU. There are too many veto points, excessively large collegial bodies, overloaded management boards, fragmented responsibilities and slow adjustment of staff and budgets.
In the current system, all member countries have veto power over decisions that affect the EU in its entirety. The Council must vote by unanimity on questions such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the MFF, fiscal rules, environmental rules, constitutional matters such as treaty revisions and major institutional changes, and enlargement. Enlargement not only entails accepting new candidates, but also the opening and closing of negotiation chapters, and the final accession of all candidates. For example, Hungary blocked negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova by vetoing the opening of the Fundamentals cluster during the Orban government. Even under a qualified majority, the Council generally tries to avoid outvoting governments. Nine more members would inherently lead to more bilateral consultations, written positions, reservations, compromise drafts, and meetings before a proposal is considered ready. After joining the EU under the current framework, new members may find fundamental differences with the proposed overarching policies and refuse their implementation into law. The problem is exacerbated exactly by the reason why unanimity is required; these decisions are the most important areas of work in the EU, in that they impact the individual member states the most and define the international stance of the Union. Requiring an increasing number of states with diverging political priorities and weakening democracies to agree in unanimity on the most important matters could effectively kill the EU’s ability to drive change and innovation in the bloc.
Enlarging the EU under its current structure would not greatly affect the effectiveness of qualified majority decision-making. The accession of the small Balkan states would cause a shift in the necessary coalitions to pass the State-count threshold, while the accession of Ukraine would impact the population threshold.
The parliament currently has 720 MEPs, with a ceiling of 750 members. The current rules require a minimum of 6 members for each country. Accession of the current candidates would require either a reform of these rules or a relinquishing of more than 50 seats by current members.
The EU Parliament is already one of the world’s largest parliamentary assemblies, which makes deliberation harder and reduces each MEP’s practical speaking time and individual influence. Enlarging the chamber beyond the present ceiling would exacerbate this. A Franco-German report on the effects of EU enlargement on voting recommends that the current system governing allocation of seats be reformed to mathematical formulas, to avoid political bargaining between states. Even then, increasing the diversity of the represented citizens would cause an increase in national positions, delegations, interparliamentary relations and bargaining, which could slow down decision-making and increase complexity in the institution.
If unchanged, the Commission could expand to up to 36 members from the current 27. A 36-member college would compromise operational efficiency materially, likely leading to increased power in the President, Vice President and Secretariat-General to mediate solutions, and major increases in inter-service consultations, cabinet coordination, the length of discussions, particularity of the solutions, and political bargaining. An optimal solution to this would be a smaller rotating college, given that members of the Commission are supposed to operate with some degree of independence from the interests of their countries. However, this is politically unlikely: it would be seen as a major loss of control of the EU bodies by the member states. Regardless of the reforms applied to the Commission, the workload of this body would increase disproportionately: the Commission would need to ensure implementation in nine more jurisdictions and conduct increased fiscal, economic and rule-of-law surveillance, manage more complex funding allocations and the negotiation of national plans.
Furthermore, the accession of new states in the EU would substantially increase the workload of audit, certification and authorization bodies. Increased bureaucracy without a scalable system will cause further inefficiencies and limit EU integration, pushing the solution to the problem of commercial law complexity further away. Moreover, the EU decision-making bodies would need the support of more research, data, and policy organizations to face the problem of negotiating as a single body and to find solutions to internal issues in the Union. This could potentially make the bureaucratic and particularity issues of the EU more severe and cause further complexity in the sectors that give recommendations to the EU bodies. Many of the decentralized bodies under the EU umbrella are led by management boards with members from every member country. Although this increases representation of the individual countries, as enlargement of the EU continues, maintaining this structure will slow down decision-making. Moreover, many of these institutions already have weak governance, overlapping roles, unclear mandates, and a low capacity to implement policies effectively. Lastly, language representation will increase the costs of implementing decisions and regulations in the EU; for some bodies, such as the CJEU, language representation already reaches half of the total staff. The current candidates could add as many as eight languages to the current translation requirements (although Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian have extremely high similarity to Croatian, which is already a language of the EU), and it has been estimated that integration, legal revision, publication and training for each would add at least 44 million Euros to the current translation expenses (although this estimate comes from 2015, and the widespread use of AI could increase productivity).
The High Potential Geopolitical Benefits of Enlarging the EU
EU enlargement has very high potential in international politics. Accession of the current candidate countries (especially Moldova and Ukraine) could remove political grey zones which currently favor external influence and pose threats to the Union: actors such as Russia and China try to gain influence in non-aligned areas by exploiting institutional ambiguity and economic dependence.
Making these countries a part of the EU system would place them in a more stable, safe environment; it would accelerate economic growth, and it would reduce dependence on foreign investments. By making the current candidates a part of the EU, the Union would be able to coordinate investment in a strategic manner, so as to build greater synergies and connect national projects to international plans; moreover, with EU collaboration, the current candidates would be able to effectively pursue strategic objectives that would be impractical or impossible to tackle independently. Implementation of the EU acquis could improve democracy and rule of law in these countries, making them more resistant to foreign, non-democratic influence.
Strengthening military relations with Ukraine would add substantial armed forces, a sizable defense-industrial base, mobilization experience, and military experience in conflicts against Russia, together with knowledge of practical drone warfare and electronic warfare. In the Balkan region, Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia are members of NATO. Their accession would allow for greater continuity between EU and NATO territories, while giving the European security system more independence from extra-EU countries in NATO.
The current candidate countries also possess resources including copper, lithium, manganese and bauxite. Integrating those resources into the European market could reduce external dependencies in strategic supply chains, although it would not eliminate reliance on the main exporters of strategic materials: Magnesium, Gallium and permanent-magnet rare earths from China, Lithium from Chile, Boron from Türkiye, Bauxite from Guinea, Manganese from South Africa and Gabon, and Nickel from Russia, among others.
Pulling Off a United Front With Realistic Military Sway is Difficult, Risky and Expensive
The main geopolitical issue with EU enlargement is that decisions made on Common Foreign and Security Policy require unanimous approval.
Recent history has already shown that implementing EU law is not by itself enough to prevent democratic backsliding and non-alignment between member states. An example of this has been Hungary: the country became an EU member in 2004, after about 6 years of negotiations; following the election of Viktor Orban in 2010, Fidesz rapidly took control over lawmaking and the media landscape, building a hybrid regime that lasted for more than 15 years. Candidates may enact the required laws while leaving informal patronage networks, biased media and selective prosecution de facto intact. After a State has entered the EU, the only prominent tools at the disposal of the intergovernmental EU bodies to enforce treaties are infringement proceedings, CJEU judgements, and financial conditionality.
Lastly, if the EU admitted a State with strong economic or cultural ties to a strategic opponent, it would risk hampering its ability to provide a united political front, which is fundamental to ensuring quick and effective decision-making. If the EU became unable to effectively operate on the geopolitical level, member countries would start to work independently or form coalitions, which would accelerate political fragmentation and make real, EU-wide political union increasingly hard.
According to a 2025 report by the European Court of Auditors, military cooperation between the existing member states is made ineffective by an inadequate military mobility network. Infrastructure across the Union cannot currently support effective mobilization; expanding the borders of the EU would extend these logistical requirements to new countries, where infrastructure is often even more uneven. In the case of Ukraine, factors such as increased security risks, unexploded ordnance, and damaged infrastructure due to the war would all add additional costs to military infrastructure refurbishments.
Even now, there is an effective mismatch between military investment ambitions, actual spending, and the effectiveness of these investments. When the long-term MFF budget was planned in 2021, the Commission initially proposed 6.5 billion Euros for military mobility, but ultimately only dedicated 1.7 billion, which were spent before the budget had reached its third year. Moreover, all these investments were hindered by opaque governance, a lack of audits and controls, and the absence of a single overall coordinator.
Effective defense cooperation in an enlarged EU requires forces and equipment to move quickly from Western and Central Europe to the eastern and southeastern frontier, and vice versa. Funding to ensure this can be partially provided by NATO or through national defense budgets, but this decreases the ability to effectively coordinate projects within the EU to make common defense a real possibility.
The View From the Candidates: Is Joining Convenient?
A high volume of EU discussion on enlargement is made assuming that current candidates desire accession. However, candidates could exploit the accession process to build closer ties with the EU without necessarily losing the independence that comes with not being a member state. The current candidates get financial assistance in exchange for reforms which amount to tens of billions of Euros every year in grants, together with assistance loans. Furthermore, their markets are already somewhat integrated with the EU through facilities that eliminate most customs duties and decrease controls on some goods exported to the Union. However, indirect expenses caused by relatively high regulation still exist, keeping this framework short of being part of the internal market.
Although EU accession may be a popular goal for the population of current candidates, the governments and ruling class of these countries may effectively value legal independence more than joining the EU. These governments could cause negotiations to proceed more slowly to ensure the protection of their personal interests.
Enlargement is a complex strategic undertaking, and for it to be successful it should be preceded by institutional reforms that allow an expanded Union to take timely decisions, particularly in areas currently constrained by unanimity. In order to limit redundancies and keep the costs of administering a larger Union in check, it is necessary that EU agencies, supervisory bodies and administrative structures be reviewed. This will make it possible to improve the workflow and governance of these agencies, set clear responsibilities and duties, eliminate duplication, and ensure that these bodies have sufficient capacity for the additional workload created by enlargement. Such a reform must not be assumed to reduce expenditures, but it would allow for a more orderly and scalable system which would remain maintainable and effective in the future.
Accession must be governed by legally binding and country-specific conditions to reflect the different characteristics of the new members. The EU should implement sound transitional arrangements, credible budgetary ceilings and enforceable pre- and post-accession mechanisms concerning the rule of law, corruption, migration, security and the management of EU funds. This will help address the main public concerns of the EU population, ensuring that current citizens do not perceive themselves to be negatively impacted by the enlargement of the Union. These transitional agreements must adapt the acceding countries to the EU system, rather than create permanent second-class membership or arbitrary political barriers. This can ensure that the new candidates are not unjustly exploited, while the EU remains a functional institution and is strengthened by the addition of new members.
Lastly, enlargement will require sustained alignment with future EU foreign and security policy, as well as practical military cooperation supported by investment in defense readiness, military mobility, and functioning infrastructures. Setting more rigid governance structures for these investments, with clear responsibilities and budgets, would increase the chances of success, limit inefficiency, and reduce wasted funds.
Enlargement is one of the best policies at the disposal of the Union to strengthen the internal market, increase security and geopolitical influence, ultimately creating a truly democratic and peaceful continent; it is fundamental that this opportunity not be wasted through indecision or inaction.
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