New European Enlargement and its Influence on EU Internal Reforms: Ukrainian Dimension

We discuss these and other questions with Dr. Michael Emerson, a Senior Associate Research fellow of the Centre for European Political Studies, who has more than thirty years of experience with European foreign policy and EU neighborhood projects. He participated in a special thematic discussion at 7th Lemkin Reunion (June 3-4) – annual conference organized by Shattuck Center for Human Rights (Central European University in Vienna). Its 2024 edition was dedicated to various aspects of post-war Ukraine’s reconstruction. 

Ihor Moshenets: Good afternoon, Dr. Emerson. Experts and scholars usually connect the salience of EU Parliament elections with the deeper level formation of the EU as a truly unified political community. People are getting used to perceiving Brussels as a place influencing some of their important life issues and economic interests. On the other hand, the opponents of further integration for various reasons (migration, extensive bureaucratization, economic effects) could get more vocal. What does this increased general attention to EU issues provide more for the fate of European integration – pluses or minuses? And are these June elections somehow special in this regard? 

Michael Emerson: The imminent elections for the European Parliament are indeed notable looking at the historic evolution of these elections. This one is more sharply political than ever, with the party-political groups getting clearer identities with respect to several key issues that inevitably have a European dimension, with migration and Russia’s aggression at the top of the list, both raising existential security and societal issues with both Southern and Eastern neighborhoods. Logically such issues  demand enhanced powers at the EU level, which the core political centre (i.e. the alliance of centre-left, centre, and centre-right political groups) mostly supports, as was the case of the outgoing European Parliament with its call for the Treaty reform.  

I.M. It looks like the election to the European Parliament will end with the political shift to the right with electoral gains for all the right European parties. The potential coalition of Ursula von der Layen’s European People’s Party with Georgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (and not a traditional broad coalition with the Socialist Party) is discussed as a real option which could substitute traditional broad coalition between European People’s Party and Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. What political impact might  this ideological orientation of the majority  in the European Parliament have on the preparation for future EU enlargement? 

M.E. The traditional broad centrist coalition has to be prepared for electoral gains by the so-called ‘extreme right’. Von der Leyen’s conditions for cooperating with extreme right parties include support for Ukraine, which excludes many of them. Von der Leyen’s cordial relations with Georgia Meloni testifies to her support for Ukraine, but also to the disunited nature of the so-called extreme right party groups (and it is not clear whether all these parties are in fact ‘extreme right’). There is the well-known syndrome of extreme parties moderating their positions as they get closer to power. At the very extreme end of the political spectrum we note the recent expulsion of the German AfD party from its political group because some of its leaders have been flirting with Nazi symbolism. Several of them are Putin-friendly, but these are unlikely to gain sufficient support compared to the dominant  centrist groups to determine the Parliament’s main orientations. A hardening of policies towards immigration from Africa and Asia is possible, since here the extreme right’s agenda has most in common with that of centrist parties. But on the prospects for next enlargements I would not expect the new European Parliament to change its orientation.

I.M. The EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Maternova on this year’s Day of Europe (May 9th) claimed that the date of 2030 for Ukraine’s EU accession is quite realistic. In your view, what are the main factors which will define the feasibility of that accession date? 

M.E. One has to look at both sides — the preparedness for membership of Ukraine, and of the EU itself. 

On the EU side, the needed technical reforms of the enlargement process (which we discuss below) could certainly be in place by 2030, depending only on the basic political will of EU leaders to progress. 

On the side of Ukraine, 2030 could be feasible regarding the broad range of internal market reforms, given the substantial progress already made under the free trade provisions of the Association Agreement. 

But of course the big unknown is when the war will end, and under what political and territorial conditions. The EU has a standard doctrine to require political and territorial unity of acceding states. That said, there is the precedent of Cyprus that acceded without re-unification. The mitigating circumstances in this case were that the frontier between North and South was no longer subject to military conflict, and was open for free and peaceful movement of persons across the border. The EU also has cooperative relations with the North. No one knows when and if these minimal conditions may be met in Ukraine. 

I.M. How the drawbacks of the EU accession procedure have hampered the EU enlargement during the last decade? In 2020 EU revised its accession methodology, but now it seems that it was not sufficient. How these methodologies were different for different countries? Why the existing methodology is not viewed by many experts as effective today? 

M.E. The existing methodology’s most glaring weakness is the requirement of unanimous agreement for each of the smallest steps, namely for agreeing separately on the opening and closing of all 35 chapters. This has been seen shamefully in the case of Bulgaria blocking North Macedonia’s progress over any chapter for reasons pertaining to the history of the Balkans under the Ottoman empire, and in particular the redrawing of the maps of both Macedonia and Bulgaria with the Balkan wars ending the Ottoman empire. If France and Germany could be politically reconciled only a decade after the second World War, it is absurd that Bulgaria and Macedonia could not do so over a century after the end of the Ottoman empire, even after Macedonia agreed to add North to its name. We all have skeletons in our historical cupboards, from the British to Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. 

The so-called revised enlargement methodology did nothing to remedy this low-level veto problem, even while no one is contesting that the ultimate accession decision has to remain subject to unanimity. Moreover, various EU member states are just hiding behind the Bulgarian absurdity, using this decision-making affair in some cases as a cover for more fundamental reservations.

I.M. The Centre for European Political Studies (CEPS), together with the Belgrad-based European Policy Centre,  introduced the Staged Accession Model as the policy proposal for the clarification of gradual European accession procedure. Later your team published a revised version. What are the main ideas of this model, and how it could provide the solution for existing long-term integration stalemates for aspiring countries?

M.E. The Staged Accession proposal combines two essential ideas. 

The first idea is to get away from the ‘binary’ aspect of the process so far, namely that you are either in or out, and that the benefits of accession are all held back while preparing for membership until the day of accession. Since the preparatory work is burdensome and takes years, the whole process can become discouraging, and the incentive of accession becomes difficult to sustain. The proposal therefore is to have four stages, in which the passage from stage to stage is conditional on measured ratings of degrees of compliance with EU laws and policies, when the access to the EU budget funding and to the policy setting institutions is progressively secured in parallel. This will help the candidate states advance.

The second idea is to reassure existing member states over their main justifiable concern that the new member states, possibly with fragile democracies and rule of law systems, might upon accession backslide in their respect for EU norms. This is unfortunately not just a theoretical worry, as Hungary and Poland have illustrated in backsliding over democratic practice and the rule of law, and used their veto powers in the Council of EU Ministers abusively to block the sound governance of the EU. We observe this today in Victor Orban’s regime in Hungary blocking aid to Ukraine. The Polish problem was overcome last year when Donald Tusk succeeded in elections to oust the prior regime that had been converting Poland into an autocratic state. 

The proposal under Staged Accession then is that in the penultimate Stage III before full accession a candidate state will not have veto powers in the Council. This is to ease the concerns of existing member states. This proposal is seen as highly relevant to the concerns in question, but is also considered politically or legally problematic. It resonates for some as ‘second class’ membership, while others are concerned that it erodes the integrity and unicity of the EU’s legal structure. 

We note therefore a range of alternative mechanisms aiming at the same purpose. One would be to reform Article 7 of the EU Treaty, which already provides for the suspension of all voting powers in the Council by member states that seriously deviate from EU political values. This article has an elaborate procedure before such a decision can be taken by the unanimity of all member states except the deviant state in question. The procedure was actually launched against Poland, and has just now been withdrawn with the return of Donald Tusk to lead the government. The problem was that the Polish and Hungarian leaders made a mutual “defence deal”, in which either would prevent unanimity of a Council decision against the other. The needed reform would therefore be to switch the decision-making mechanism to a ‘super qualified majority’, more demanding than the existing standard qualified majority, resembling the requirements for amendment of the constitution in some countries. 

Another proposal is to create a new category of Associate Membership that would provide for full access to the policies and funding of the EU, but not to voting in the Council. This regime would be temporary while waiting for the EU’s own ‘deepening’ reforms to advance, for example, for the use of unanimity to give way to qualified majority voting in most of the areas where it still applies. Such reforms are currently being actively debated and advocated, for example, by the European Parliament and by a recent French-German group of independent experts. When this happens, the need for our Stage III will evaporate. 

I.M. What are the similarities and differences between your model with various ideas of so-called “sectoral integration”, especially models of two-stage integration (first Common market, then full membership)? Are they mutually exclusive or could be complements?

M.E. Sectoral integration can be integrated into Staged Accession, where a candidate is interested and able to achieve compliance with certain clusters and chapters faster than with others. This can enter into the measured ratings, and move up the average ratings to the point of passing from stage to stage. But this is not an alternative to full accession. Ukraine wants to go in that direction, using the language of acceding to sectoral unions, such as energy, digital, and customs unions and the single market. Ukraine started this under President Poroshenko, well before it obtained candidate status. If one accedes to these several unions, the candidate state will have accomplished virtually all the economic requirements of accession; in that case why not finish the job and fulfill the political conditions as well?

The EU Council is adopting the language favouring ‘gradual’ accession, without saying what precisely this means. It could mean Staged Accession, but the Council has not been willing to say this.

One should remain cautious about formulas that may in themselves sound positive, but may realistically be serving as alibis for member states to avoid advancing on the fundamentals of full accession.

I.M. One of the core ideas of the Staged Accession Model is a quantification of accession criteria which should expectedly benefit integrating countries and provide more clarity to the process.  How should this work in practice?  

M.E. The European Commission in its annual ‘Enlargement Package’ reviews of the progress in meeting the requirements of all chapters employs a qualitative summary coding of progress with five levels: advanced, good, moderate, some, and early preparedness for accession. It would be easy for the Commission to attach quantification to these ratings on a scale from 5 to 1. The technical value of this quantification is that numbers can be aggregated and averaged. This would provide better transparency to how the process advances. In the particular case of our Staged Accession proposal, this would become the basis for authorizing the passage from stage to stage.  

I.M. One of the main insights from your recent works  is that Ukrainian accession is manageable in financial terms for the EU (especially compared to the amount of military-time financial support that has already been provided to Ukraine). Do people in Brussels have specific discussions on which sources could be used for ensuring future enlargement, taking into account multiple other important priorities (decarbonization, industrial policy, potential defense union, etc.)?

M.E. My paper on the budgetary costs of Ukraine’s accession of September 2023 showed that if Ukraine was a full EU member state today, it would be getting net receipts of about EUR 19 billion per year, or about 0.1% of the EU’s GDP, and 12% of Ukraine’s. This would be a manageable amount for the EU’s budget, and much more important for Ukraine’s economy. It is not much bigger than the EU’s most recent EUR 50 billion aid package for four years (2024-2027), i.e. EUR 12.5 billion annually. 

There are other factors to be taken into account. First, and easing the budget burden for the EU, the central and south-eastern European new member states that acceded since 2004 have been growing faster than the EU average, and some of them will become eligible for less regional/cohesion funding, thus increasing the EU budget capacity for supporting Ukraine and other candidate states such as Moldova and the Western Balkans.  

Second, the very big costs of post-war reconstruction, estimated now by the World Bank and Kyiv School of Economics at EUR 450 billion and still mounting. These costs would be borne in principle by all G7 states, including the US, Japan and Canada in addition to the EU and the World Bank. 

This amount is 1.5 times greater than the Russian sovereign financial assets currently frozen by the West, with EU member states accounting for the majority of these assets. Intense ongoing negotiations in the G7 have only got as far as agreeing to use the investment income from these assets to help Ukraine, which generates only around EUR 2-3 billion per year. At the same time there are many (including myself) who argue in favour of outright seizure of the capital amount, with legal immunity objections overridden by the fact that Putin is a convicted war criminal. The case for seizure will strengthen the longer the war continues.

I.M. A third of the EU budget is spent on Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Ukrainian farming lands account for about one-third of the size of farming areas in the European Union. This will create important effects on the distribution of subsidies after potential Ukrainian accession. Experts are claiming that this change could turn Poland and Hungary from CAP net beneficiaries to net contributors. Accomplishing reform in such delicate conditions seems  a very hard task, especially taking into account recent protests of Polish farmers. 

Nevertheless, Europe has already overcome a similar challenge in 2004 while balancing the interests of French farmers with Polish newcomers. Could some lessons from that EU enlargement and the changes in CAP be currently applied, or are we speaking about completely different situations?

M.E. Yes, Ukraine, as the metaphorical bread-basket of Europe, poses big questions for farm policies. On the Polish trade blockages, these have been largely fabricated protests, since the extent of market disruption within the EU due to Ukrainian supplies has, according to the claims of European Commission, has been stopped already in September 2023. So realities should guide policy, even if farming lobbies are extremely strongly organized. The big reality is that Ukraine’s cereal producers have their major markets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The stress in the last year or two has of course been intensified by the temporary blockage of Black Sea exports, and their re-routing across our land borders. 

An important issue to be posed by Ukraine’s accession is the present policy of ‘direct subsidies’  paid by the EU to farmers at the rate of over EUR 200 per hectare. I see from the statistics that the 166 biggest giant farms in Ukraine of over 10,000 hectares occupy 18% of the entire agricultural land. A single farm of 10,000 hectares would receive an annual subsidy of EUR 2 million or more, which would be clearly unacceptable as a matter of income distribution policy both for the EU and the government of Ukraine. Fortunately there is a mechanism for capping subsidies for very large farms, which would have to be adapted intelligently for the needs of the Ukrainian case. 

I.M.  A new major revision of EU foundational treaties to accommodate the potential increased number of members is now widely expected. Three proposals were at the core of the report  supported by the EU Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs last October: extension of the usage of qualified majority voting in the Council (without veto power of single countries), direct election of EU Commission President and more political principle of selecting Commissioners; increasing the powers of EU Parliament (especially the right for legislative initiative and increased role in preparing budget). Do all of these changes have equal political feasibility, or might some proposals meet larger political resistance than others?

M.E. The most likely proposals concern extension of qualified majority voting in the Council and limiting the number of Commissioners; the least likely is direct election of the President of the Commission.

I.M. One of the main insights from public policy theory is that very often it is not policy problems that are creating policy solutions but rather policy solutions waiting for respective problems to get into the agenda. In this regard, are  Brussels decision-makers genuinely interested in Ukraine’s accession not only for the reasons of security and prosperity for the Eastern European region but also seeing it as an opportunity for further development of the European project, symbolic answer on euroscepticism after the migration crisis and Brexit? 

M.E.The motivations for support of Ukraine’s EU accession have several layers.

The first is the fundamental principle that accession, as inscribed in the Treaties, is open to any European democracy. This stands on its own, and was imagined without the present geopolitical context due to Russia’s autocracy and aggression.

Second is the contest between democracy and autocracy, which are opposite and competing regimes, and threatening each other. Post-communist Europe was meant to be wholly democratic, in a Europe ‘one and free’ as US presidents say when visiting our continent. We see instead that autocracy is not dead, with the Russian tsarist autocracy seeking to undermine democracy in Europe and elsewhere wherever possible. China is more powerful and also subtle, pretending not to interfere in the politics of its partner states, but its aid and investment programmes are subject to no political questions or conditions, tending effectively to disempower European incentives for democracy (for example its pre-accession to candidates such as Serbia, and funds for  existing member states such as Hungary that are conditional of democracy and rule of law standards). The EU has to counter this creeping attack on democracy in Europe, with its own enlargement as the most powerful means.  

Third, the geopolitics of war. There was a time when the idea of buffer zones or uncertain grey zone regimes was thought to serve usefully in the interests of all, separating the hard core democracies and autocracies peacefully from each other. We now see that to be an illusion, at least in the current European landscape. Putin sees grey areas as inviting his aggression, and as soft targets for his neo-imperialism. This has logically to be met by rendering the frontier between Europe’s democracy and autocracy clear and well defended, devoid of grey areas. With Ukraine wanting to be part of democratic Europe, its frontiers and democratic institutional structures have to be defended in the common interest with EU membership.

All of this requires strengthening of the internal EU competences and processes, both civil and now military, as well as the enlargement methodology.

I.M. Thank You for the interview.