Is the war in Ukraine accelerating the expansion of the EU?
Source: EU Neighbours East
by Aari Helmelaid, 8 minutes
Change During Crisis
Crisis triggers change. Evidence of this is numerous. When the covid pandemic emerged, professional and academic culture changed immediately to an online environment, and even after two years, this trend has not fully reversed. In 1996, over 30 people were killed in the Port Arthur Massacre in Australia, a crisis which triggered Australia to restrict its gun ownership laws less than two weeks after the event. Meaningful change happens faster when a crisis unexpectedly strikes and seriously affects a great number of people. Indeed, ever since Ukraine was militarily invaded in February 2022, Europe has been hit by a set of crises on multiple fronts: a refugee crisis, an energy crisis, and a political crisis.
The European Union is often criticised for its slow and bureaucratic decision-making processes, as well as its endless legislative negotiations, often leading to minimal change.
Since Russia started a war in Ukraine, they have carried out a series of attacks, at one point conducting an airstrike on a Ukrainian military base only 15 miles from the Polish, and by extension, the Union border. The EU has realised the proximity of the war, which will continue to have concrete adverse consequences inside and outside the Union. The EU has reached a turning point where the general appeasement of Russia and dormant neighbourhood policies do not suffice in the current geopolitical climate to control the belligerent. The war has incentivised members of the Union to once again pick up the subject of European expansion, especially eastward.
Source: EU Neighbours East
The Background to EU-Eastern European Relations
On the 28th of February 2022, 4 days into the war, Ukraine announced its application to the European Union, asking for immediate accession. Four days later, on the 3rd of March, Moldova and Georgia followed suit.
Accession to the EU is no short process. In 2014, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova had signed accession agreements expressing their intention to join the European Union.
All three countries take part in the European Neighbourhood Policy. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is a foreign relations instrument created by the EU that aims at strengthening the connections with countries lying south and east of the Union territories. Typically, it involves the signing of Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area Agreements with the EU, in exchange for the promise to adopt political, economic, human rights and trade reforms in the country. The ENP includes not only the EU's eastern partners but also African countries located south of the Mediterranean. The European Union offers favourable trade opportunities and financial assistance in exchange for progressive reforms in the targeted countries.
The Union’s strongest ambitions for expansion have for long lived in Eastern Europe. Hence, more concrete action to build positive relations with EU’s eastern neighbours has been materialised through the Eastern Partnership (EaP). EaP was created in 2008 as a joint initiative by the EU’s European External Actions Service and six post-Soviet Eastern European States (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) who have not yet acceded to the EU. As a side note, Belarus has suspended their participation in the partnership since June 2021 due to political tensions with the EU and the close alliance between Belarus and Russia. The EaP is a joint project falling under the large umbrella initiative of the ENP. The inter-governmental forum was created to support political, social & economic reforms in the east, promoting increased democracy, energy security, and environmental protection. Economically, the partnership has been a success with EaP members: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have signed association agreements and free trade agreements with the EU. There are, however, substantial criticisms regarding the partnership. For one, EaP lacks awareness among EU citizens and citizens of the partner countries. More importantly, EaP also suffers from aimlessness; critics don’t expect any of the EaP countries to join anytime soon given that the EU politicians mostly provide lip service about shared values and the potential for future prospects of accession, over more concrete steps towards accession. Prior to the war, this prevailing behaviour was largely observed within the Union.
Regardless of criticism, in May 2021, Georgia initiated what is known as the Associated Trio alongside Moldova and Ukraine, since these three countries have the most ambitious prospective to accede to the EU. In January 2021, Georgia and Ukraine were preparing their official application to the Union, with entry planned for 2024. However, the war with Russia has accelerated the process as all three members of the Associated trio applied for EU membership in March 2022.
Additionally, the three countries share a common characteristic of having breakaway regions that are linked with Russia. In Ukraine, Crimea has been annexed by Russia since 2014. In Georgia, the Abkhazia and South Ossetia territories have been seeking independence since the collapse of the USSR. In 2008 Georgia fought a war with Russia in the two breakaway regions, which were militarily supported by Russian troops. Finally, in Moldova, there is the region of Transnistria, an unrecognised breakaway state in Eastern Moldova that maintains close social, political, economic and military relations with Russia. If you want to know more about Transnistria, check out our previous article. Unstable geographical divisions provide another reason for the governments of the three nations to make political moves toward the west.
Does a fast-track accession even exist?
Answered shortly; no. Accession to the European Union is a lengthy process, extending to tens of years before accession actually takes place. The Treaty on the European Union states, in article 49, that any European State which respects the core values of the European Union and commits to promoting them, may apply to become a member of the Union. The Union bases itself on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Furthermore, current members of the Union must vote unanimously for the accession of the candidate state, which is one of the main obstacles in the current debate on the accession of the Associated Trio. For a country to become a member state of the European Union, it must fulfil the Copenhagen Criteria, which are usually divided into 3 main categories:
The Political Criteria include stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.
The Economic Criteria consist of a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and market forces;
The Administrative Criteria contain the capacity to effectively implement the acquis (rights and obligations legally binding in all member states) and the ability to take on the obligations of membership.
Source: EU Neighbours East
Reactions from the EU
The Associated Trio, especially Ukraine, have received a fair amount of attention and special treatment since the conflict erupted. After the war forced the EU’s institutions to once again pick up the debate on the accession of eastern European countries to the EU, reactions have been mixed. There appears to be a division between the member states themselves, and between the numerous institutions of the union.
Arguments in support of fast-track accession of the trio have come mostly from current central and eastern European member states of the EU, namely Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, who have declared and advocated for the EU to give Ukraine its ‘highest political support’ and asked the Union to grant them candidate status in order to start negotiations immediately. The collective memory of Russian aggression is still recent history for many members of this geographical group, and military security is perhaps not taken as lightly as compared to western allies. Prime Ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic even travelled to Kyiv to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to show support for the country in its hopes of accession.
Among the European institutions, the most resolute affirmation of support came from the European Parliament, with EP president Roberta Metsola being the first high-ranking EU official to travel to Ukraine to not only confirm the support of the European Parliament on Ukraine’s accession aspiration but to also promise to hold Russian aggressors accountable. Finally, she confirmed the EU's will to take in Ukrainian citizens and set up concrete funds to rebuild Ukraine.
Western Europe is less keen on rapid accession - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, for example, insisted that accession must be a slow process. Some critics argue that admitting the trio in its current state would undermine the candidacies of other potential future EU members. For example, there are Balkan nations with candidate status who have implemented reforms to a greater extent than the Associated trio, and yet still have not received membership. Moreover, critics fear that a fast-track accession to the union would offer nothing more than symbolic value, and would not be an appropriate step for a country at war, that is not fully functional and will have to rebuild so much of its society. Some suggestions have been made to find a middle ground between the very basic Association Agreements, and the more tangible Candidate Status for these three countries, or to reform the decades-long process towards accession as a whole. Internal struggles with integrating current Eurosceptic EU member states form another reason for western Europe to doubt the success of fast-track accession. In contrast to EP’s confirmation of support, Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen initially expressed that Ukraine ‘belongs in the European family’ but that ‘it would take time’. Von der Leyen travelled to Kyiv in April and met with president Zelensky, handing him a questionnaire at the press conference as a demonstration of the start of negotiations for Ukraine’s candidacy to the EU. Von der Leyen’s stance on fast-track accession has become more optimistic: "It will not, as usual, be a matter of years to form this opinion, but I think a matter of weeks."
Is the accession debate only of symbolic value?
As the conflict continues, one thing has become clear – the European Union can no longer treat the accession prospects of Eastern European countries as a subject of low priority. The question of Eastern expansion has quickly become an urgent issue that requires serious consideration and concrete actions. While current declarations of intentions, solidarity, and support are largely symbolic, the war has certainly shown the EU that real change can happen at an accelerated speed when the crisis is present. If the crisis can create European unity while pushing some of the most controversial debates within the union out of the limelight, then this general sense of European unity and solidarity should be used to reform the accession process and allow the Union to genuinely view Eastern European countries as partners, and more than just neighbours of the EU.
