The Imperative of Stopping EU Expansion
Today, the EU’s great size of 27 member states can cause major problems, given the heterogeneity of member states and the fact that many key decisions in the EU still must be made unanimously. This means that any member state, including the tiny ones, can grind the agenda of the EU (population 450 million) to a halt over picayune reasons. For instance, last year Cyprus (population 1.2 million) delayed the EU from placing sanctions on Belarus for weeks in order to get the rest of the bloc to sanction Turkey as well. A few years ago, Wallonia, a Belgian region with a population of 3.6 million, almost derailed the entire EU’s trade deal with Canada because EU law requires that all member states assent to trade deals, and because Belgian law requires the assent of all its subnational governments to agree to a deal. While this is not a paradigmatic example given that Wallonia is obviously not by itself a member state, there are currently seven EU nations with even smaller populations that could try the same trick in the ratification of any future trade deal. A third example is the fact that Poland and Hungary prevent the EU from triggering Article 7 to address the democratic backsliding within both nations. The larger the number of member states, the higher the likelihood that there will be at least two malignant actors supporting each other from being sanctioned by the group, a large concern considering liberal democratic backsliding globally. Something as important as the entire EU budget can be blocked by one or two countries, as temporarily occurred last year with Poland and Hungary again.
As further expansion would only increase the number of veto points within the EU and thus the amount of dysfunction within it, it is evident that the previously inevitable logic of EU enlargement needs to become, well, evitable. Unfortunately, announcing a ban on expansion will lead to foreign policy concerns, as it will surely upset the Western Balkan nations (as well as Ukraine) who want to join the EU. However, surely these foreign policy problems are preferable to furthering the increasingly common issue of not being able to articulate a foreign policy at all. For instance, the EU has not been able to articulate at all what sort of sanctions it is willing to impose on Moscow in the event of further invasion of Ukraine, largely because member states are divided. Meanwhile, Hungary supports the actions of a Bosnian Serb political leader who is currently inciting Serbian nationalism, a movement that denies genocide. Consequently, if the situation in Bosnia gets worse and the EU tries to take action in the future, the EU could potentially be hamstrung given that unanimity is currently needed in such foreign policy decisions. Ironically, this problem is also seen in trying to make enlargement decisions. In part because of concerns about growing Russian and Chinese influence, the EU wants to start accession talks with North Macedonia. However, Bulgaria is single handedly preventing these talks from starting due to its own disagreements with the North Macedonian government. The head of EU foreign policy has already called his job “mission impossible”. It should be seen as essential that the EU does not cause itself to become even more impotent than it already is.
In the event that the EU does announce an end to expansion, it will have to adopt a new policy towards the Western Balkans and Ukraine. In this case, it should offer sweetheart economic deals to these nations, in collaboration with the United States, to alleviate anti-Western sentiments that will likely arise. Given that the West’s share of global GDP is declining and will only continue to decline in the future, the US needs the EU to have the capacity to make effective foreign policy decisions in order to properly defend common liberal democratic values in an increasingly illberal world. Thus, EU leaders should convey to Washington why it is in its interest to support the non-expansion of the EU and help mitigate the fallout from announcing this change in policy.
Unfortunately, it is very possible that even a generous economic offer won’t quell anti-Western sentiments in the region and lead to more influence for China and other authoritarian states. However, given the EU’s increasing inefficacy, this must be a price it is willing to pay. This is especially the case given that the alternative to ending EU expansion is no guarantee of Western Balkan nations becoming part of the West given that they want to join the EU largely for economic reasons rather than political ones. Polish governmental officials have already expressed the view that it’s no longer in their country’s interest to continue criticizing China “simply to please the Americans.” Is there any reason to expect a different stance from hypothetical EU member states Montenegro or North Macedonia?
"The European Union flag in the European Parliament in Strasbourg" by European Parliament is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
