EU enlargement chief calls on countries to find a way for new members to join

BRUSSELS — The EU needs to change its rules to enable a new wave of countries to join, the bloc’s enlargement chief said Tuesday, calling on capitals to present their own plans after they rejected proposals by the Commission to streamline the process.

Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos said the EU’s executive arm had already presented three options to countries and “without … the decision of the member states, we cannot move on,” speaking at POLITICO’s Competitive Europe Summit.

Those three options include maintaining the status quo, changing the current system to ensure candidate countries don’t languish for years, or the reverse enlargement proposal put forward by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her team, where applicants would join before completing key reforms.

The accession process has been complicated by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s persistent refusal to ensure the unanimous support needed for Ukraine to proceed in its candidacy. Reverse enlargement was envisioned by Brussels as a way for Kyiv and others to begin to get access to the single market and investment schemes before becoming a full EU member.

“From the first exchange with the member states [it’s clear] the number three option is not okay … this would be a revolution,” Kos said in an onstage interview, adding that “the number one option, the status quo, is also not an option.”

While a redesign of the system is likely, the Slovenian commissioner went on, “now we are debating into [which] direction. How can we make the process faster in the sense of enhanced gradual integration?”

At a dinner with ambassadors earlier this month, von der Leyen’s chief of staff Björn Seibert was warned that the reverse enlargement proposal was seen as unworkable by capitals. Envoys cite both arduous legal requirements around how new countries can join and fears that new countries could backslide democratically and end up blocking the EU agenda, as Hungary has done.

“We think only one or two countries are supportive of the proposals from the Commission so it’s not a great success,” said one of the diplomats, cautioning that capitals want to ensure enlargement proceeds in a way that fits their own legal requirements.

“There is great support for accession of Ukraine to the European Union,” said a second diplomat. “But it is also true that almost no member state supports accession before the negotiations will have been finished in a regular way.”

A different way

Four diplomats, granted anonymity to speak frankly about the sensitive talks, told POLITICO that countries are now in the process of developing their own proposals to share with the Commission. These would set out alternative mechanisms, likely focusing on how candidate countries can feel the benefits of alignment with the EU’s market and access to its investment schemes.

“If member states don’t like ‘reverse enlargement,’ that is fine,” said one EU official, “but they can put their proposals on the table too.”

In a rare show of unity last month, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić penned an op-ed in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that bemoaned the slow pace of efforts to get the benefits of closer alignment with the bloc. This was the result of “internal reforms, geopolitical tensions, institutional constraints, and legitimate concerns within member states,” they wrote.

Instead, they said, their countries want to join the Single Market, as well as the borderless Schengen area, without getting the political rights and veto power of full members. The plan, which would create a two-tier EU of rule makers and rule takers, has been backed by some smaller candidate countries, and met with skepticism from Moldova and Ukraine which aim to be admitted on an equal basis as others have.

However, Kos dismissed the call, saying she was unsure if the leaders “know how much you have to deliver if you want to be a part of Schengen or common market,” and that the process of reforms is arduous for economic integration as well as EU membership. No country has become a member since Croatia in 2013.

Ukraine’s aspiration to join the bloc by Jan. 1, 2027, she went on, would be “impossible.” Iceland, by contrast, could be a “special case” and “really go quick” if voters decide to reopen negotiations in a referendum to be held this summer amid geopolitical insecurity and tensions with the United States. President Donald Trump repeatedly mistook Iceland for Greenland in a speech in January, as he insisted his country should take control of Arctic territories.

“Iceland is so much integrated already through the EEA that the Common Market is there. Schengen is there,” Kos said. “So the most difficult topics, if I speak about the necessary reforms or, being integrated in the EU, they already are [there]. If we speak about the development of democracy, they are very high. European values, they are very high.”