Gradual Integration: Smarter Enlargement, Europe à la Carte or Controlled Stagnation?

https://doi.org/10.63189/LEPF8965

At the end of March 2024, as one of its latest strategic initiatives before the EU elections, the Commission published its communication on pre-enlargement reforms and policy reviews (Communication 2024).^[1] The Commission repeats that “Enlargement is in the Union’s own strategic interest”, and adds that “while reforms were necessary before, with enlargement they become indispensable”. As there has not been much progress concerning enlargement over the last decade, and the possibility of any large-scale EU reform remains elusive in the near future, the Commission returns to the idea of ‘gradual integration’. What is this idea though?

Interestingly, in the last months of its office the ‘previous’ Commission also published a communication on enhancing the accession process.^[2] There the Commission admitted that the accession process needs to be ‘reinvigorated’. One of the Commission’s crucial proposals contained in this document was to organise the 33 ‘chapters’, individual policies which were the subject of negotiations with candidate countries, into 6 ‘clusters’.^[3] Progress within these clusters would be monitored and fulfilment of the pre-set criteria would lead to ‘accelerated integration’, including “phasing-in to individual EU policies, the EU market and EU programmes”. Commentators immediately begun discussing the possibilities this new approach provides in academic literature.^[4] So did different think-tanks. Among the most influential ones, in 2023 the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and European Policy Centre (EPC) published a detailed Template 2.0 for Staged Accession to the EU.^[5]

The basic idea behind the concept of gradual integration is that EU membership should not be a binary ‘finally-in’ / ‘still-out’ procedure, but rather a step-by-step process, allowing the prospective members to gradually integrate into different EU policies. It may help the countries seeking membership in “validating the candidates’ already achieved progress, offering tangible incentives, and potentially preventing the democratic backsliding”.^[6] This approach is also in line with previous empirical research, showing that breaking the integration process into separate stages leads to more effective implementation of EU legislation,^[7] while too-long a process of accession significantly decreases the willingness to conduct the necessary reforms.^[8]

Thinking in the context of ‘gradual integration’ has become an EU policy ‘mainstream’. The Communication 2024 itself describes the possibilities for gradual integration in individual policy areas, from connectivity to border management. The possible perils of this approach are less discussed. Let us concentrate here on two principal ones: the risk of fragmentation within the EU, and the risk of ‘perpetual’ negotiations.

Fragmentation and pick-and-choose strategies

Despite the possibility of ‘enhanced cooperation’ (Art. 20 TEU) and opt-outs from certain specific policies (most prominently the Euro), the EU is predominantly based on the ‘whole package’ approach – member states are in principle involved in all the EU’s activities. For example, to permanently opt out from the Euro currency was presumably not an option for the countries joining the EU after the Maastricht Treaty. Presumably, some member states might not wish to be involved in all the EU’s policies. For example, some might hypothetically wish not to be involved in the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Under the current EU rules, there is however no way for them to opt out. Conversely, some prospective members might be happy enough to be integrated in the Internal Market (Cluster 2) but avoid common external relations (Cluster 6). Paradoxically, that might create envy on part of some current member states. The functioning of the EU would therefore become fragmented, with different countries participating in different areas of its activities.

Would such a fragmentation be necessarily a bad thing? I will not discuss the technicalities of such a policy now, but in my opinion, not necessarily. If the ‘clusters’ are designed in a sufficiently robust way that would not endanger their internal integrity, it might be a viable alternative for all the members to choose which policies they wish to participate in. Certain policies are the core of EU integration, while some are voluntary.

Two obstacles currently stand in way of such an approach. First, on a technical level the ‘clusters’ are currently not defined in such a way. Nevertheless, most fundamentally, a substantive amendment to the primary law would need to be made, allowing the current member states to also make their choice — which is difficult to imagine under the prevailing political reality.

Ever longer integration

Whereas the first problem is connected with the lack of willingness of candidate countries to integrate into some EU policies, the other is concerned with lack of will on part of the member states themselves. It might happen that some candidate countries would be allowed to integrate into some policies, thus putting them firmly in the EU’s orbit, while the negotiations concerning other policies may drag on for years, depriving them of the benefits of full membership.^[9] Such ‘partly integrated’ countries would be hesitant to abandon the accession negotiations with the EU, but might ultimately lose hope of becoming full members.

Conclusions

The concept of gradual integration may have the potential to awaken the stagnating process of EU enlargement. So far, however, it is only a concept without sufficiently clear details. Enlargement will be one of the crucial tasks standing before the new Commission. Even though the current Commission seems to suggest in the Communication 2024 that any pre-enlargement amendments to the primary law are not necessary, most member states do not seem to agree. The Franco-German proposal on EU institutional reform^[10] was the one most discussed in 2023. There will be surely other reform ideas from other member states.

In my opinion, the discussion on EU reform needs to be finished before any potential enlargement. Not only do there need to be rules in place that would enable the EU to run smoothly with significantly more members — that is merely a technicality. What is more important is a clear vision of the EU’s competences and its relationships with the member states. Not only for the current members, but also for the future ones.

^[1] Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, The European Council and the Council on pre-enlargement reforms and policy reviews. 20 March 2024, COM(2024) 146 final.

^[2] Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Enhancing the Accession Process – A Credible EU Perspective for Western Balkans. 5 February 2020, COM(2020) 57 final.

^[3] E.g. 9 chapters from Free movement of goods (Chapter 1) to Consumer and health protection (Chapter 28) would become a single ‘cluster’ Internal Market.

^[4] E.g. Bargiacchi (2020); Emerson and Blockmans (2022).

^[5] Mihajlović, M., Blockmans, S., Subotić, S., Emerson, M. (2023), Template 2.0 for Staged Accession to the EU, CEPS and EPC [online]. Available at: https://cdn.ceps.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Template-2.0-for-Staged-Accession-to-the-EU.pdf (accessed 15 August 2024).

^[6] Petrović (2022), p. 308.

^[7] Steunenberg and Dimitrova (2007).

^[8] O’Brennan (2014).

^[9] The same question is posed by Juzová (2023), p. 7: “How can the process be credible and avoid candidates stagnating at a certain level of integration, either due to lack of political will among member states or due to lack of interest of the political leaders to continue the required reforms?”

^[10] Report of the Franco-German Working Group on EU Institutional Reform. Sailing in High Seas: Reforming and Enlarging the EU for the 21st Century [online]. Available at: https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/blob/2617322/4d0e0010ffcd8c0079e21329bbbb3332/230919-rfaa-deu-fra-bericht-data.pdf (accessed 15 August 2024).

References

Bargiacchi, P. (2020), The Revised Enlargement Methodology for the Western Balkans, Regional Law Review, 2020, pp. 47 – 58.

Emerson, M., Blockmans, S. (2022), Next Steps for EU Enlargement – Forwards or Backwards? Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies [online]. Available at: https://www.ui.se/globalassets/ui.se-eng/publications/sceeus/next-steps-for-eu-enlargement-forwards-or-backwards.pdf (accessed 15 August 2024).

Juzová, J. (2023), Gradual Integration Process: Towards Restoring Effectiveness and Credibility of EU Enlargement, Europeum [online]. Available at: https://europeum.org/data/articles/gradual-integration-process-towards-restoring-effectiveness-and-credibility-of-eu-enlargement-1.pdf (accessed 15 August 2024).

O’Brennan, J. (2014), On the Slow Train to Nowhere? The European Union, ‘Enlargement Fatigue’ and the Western Balkans, European Foreign Affairs Review, 19 (2), pp. 221–241.

Petrović, M. (2022), Towards Gradual Integration of the Western Balkans into the European Union: The case of Serbia, Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, 8 (1), pp. 308–321.

Steunenberg, B., Dimitrova, A. (2007), Compliance in the EU enlargement process: the limits of conditionality, European Integration Online Papers, 11 (5).