1 New challenges, or familiar challenges in unfamiliar form?

There is a tendency to think, as we face a challenge, that the problem we are addressing is new and uniquely difficult. But is that really the case here?

A future round of EU enlargement may very possibly be a ‘Big Enlargement 2.0’. There are currently nine candidate countries for membership: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Türkiye, and Ukraine (and Kosovo is a potential candidate).Footnote 1 Let us remember, however, that the 2004 enlargement added ten new Member States: eight from Eastern Europe (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) plus Cyprus and Malta. EU membership thus grew in one bound from 15 to 25 Member States. The ‘Big Enlargement 1.0’ was followed, of course, by the accession of Bulgaria and Romania just three years later, in 2007, and the arrival of Croatia in 2013.

Let me therefore endorse Michel Petite’s comments about ‘déjà vu’. Indeed, the Report of the Group of TwelveFootnote 2 discusses many of the same issues (using many of the same expressions) that I too remember as being current in the 1990s and early 2000s. A numerical increase in membership puts an obvious spotlight on institutional reform. Greater diversity poses evident challenges in terms of economic and legal absorption. Amongst the candidate countries there will be different levels of economic development and different priority economic sectors, more legal systems, more languages, more potential references for preliminary rulings to the CJEU from more national judiciary seeking enlightenment … These too were issues that accompanied the 2004 accessions.

I therefore suggest that many of the challenges posed by a big future enlargement are indeed likely to be reiterations of challenges that were addressed reasonably successfully in the 2004 enlargement. I do emphasise, however, the words ‘reasonably successfully’. I am not suggesting that the EU got everything right in 2004.

I want now to look at these ‘repeat challenges’ for a Big Enlargement 2.0 under two headings: challenges for the European Union as such, and challenges for the new Member States. I emphasise that what follows does not, in either case, pretend to be an exhaustive list.

2 Challenges for the European Union

Let us begin with the institutional challenges: the composition of the Council, European Commission, and European Parliament. As the European Union becomes bigger, it becomes even more important to maintain flexibility and avoid institutional sclerosis. The decision-making process must work. The risk of blockage from a single ‘Neinsager’ (an unwilling Member State) is already real enough with 27 Member States. That risk can only increase further if there are more players. Naturally a bigger EU will also need to have adequate resources to fund its institutional structure. To highlight just one aspect: there is the linguistic challenge presented by the need to ensure that legislation and caselaw are available to the citizen and to national administrations in all the new official languages. Proper dialogue between the EU institutions and the ordinary citizen is vital. That necessarily implies adequate multilingual investment in communication.

All these factors point – as the Group of Twelve correctly observed – to the need for some institutional reform to happen in the very near future, before any future enlargement takes place.

There are, too, the obvious key and overarching questions that are specifically tied to enlargement, deriving from the need to integrate the new Member States smoothly and effectively. Those questions divide up into (at least) three categories: economic (bluntly, ‘can we afford it?’), political (the functioning of the institutions, but also the alignment of political culture), and legal (‘can the EU legal order function properly within the new Member States’ individual legal systems?’).

And then there are the wider questions. What do we need to do to make the European Union function better (whether by ‘better’ we mean ‘more efficiently’, or ‘more democratically’, or a combination of the two)? With more Member States, there is an inherent risk of dilution of focus. What is the EU’s identity? Its message and purpose? Its desired direction of travel? How do we ensure that European citizens do not regard the ‘European project’ as something in the hands of remote unelected bureaucrats in Brussels? How do we give them ‘buy-in’, so that they know themselves to be an integral and essential part of that project?

3 Challenges for the individual accession states

The individual accession states are boarding a moving train to an undefined destination. That is, simultaneously, a challenge and an opportunity.

There is the obvious need to identify everything that needs to be addressed during the accession process – that is, issues arising not just from the Copenhagen criteria, but also from each individual chapter of the acquis.Footnote 3 Preferably, the candidate country gets ahead of the game and does this before the potential deficiencies are highlighted by the European Commission. The adjustments that are required may, indeed, extend to adapting constitutional structures.Footnote 4 Importantly, I suspect that they will include embedding the rule of law safeguards and the democratic values that will have been part of the accession process under Article 49 TEU and the Copenhagen criteria. Post-accession, the EU is not going to want to deal with such issues reappearing, or with what might be termed ‘fifth columnists’ within the EU’s own camp – that is, with Member States that appear interested in aligning with external powers whose aims are inimical to the EU’s own collective interests.

Next, the accession state’s internal institutional structures will almost certainly need to be adapted to accommodate the additional demands of EU membership. Put a different way: just staying on top of everything that is coming out of Brussels (proposals for legislation, policy initiatives, technical committees …), Strasbourg (the European Parliament and the ongoing legislative process), and Luxembourg (cases introduced and pending before the Court; recent judgments) demands a significant investment of time, energy, and administrative resources. Giving timely effect to all obligations under (continuously evolving) EU law likewise requires ongoing monitoring, analysis, and executive or legislative implementation (as the case may be).

There will need to be education (and more education, and yet more education) for everyone involved in the process. If Brexit has shown nothing else, it has demonstrated convincingly the long-term danger of deep widespread ignorance and misinformation about what EU membership involves. By ‘everyone’ I do not only mean ‘role-players’, but also politicians, administrators, business leaders, independent advisors, journalists, and influencers of every hue. Civil society (not just a technocratic elite) must be signed up to, and positive about, the new journey that is about to start for their country. The (new) EU citizens must become engaged. They must feel that they have a personal stake in the EU project. ‘Citizenship of the Union’ should not just be a nice soundbite. It is – surely – meant to be something specific and personal that enhances both a person’s life and the choices open to them.

Accession will bring change – often, radical change – to the accession state’s economy. Inevitably, there will be losers as well as winners during that process. Different economic sectors will have to understand and be prepared for that reality. If necessary, they will need to be supported through those changes and enabled to transition to alternative activities.

4 New (and worrying) challenges

So, is all of this just ‘back to the future’? Does it merely involve more of the same process that we have seen with previous accessions, albeit with different players and colleagues?

I do not think so.

We live in (much) darker times.

The original six Member States (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) knew exactly what they had lived through all too recently: the carnage and devastation of the Second World War. They had a unified view of what needed to be done in the immediate future, both to restore prosperity and to ensure that horrible mistake could never be repeated. A sequence of subsequent accessions, spaced out over two decades – Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom in 1972; Greece in 1981; Spain and Portugal in 1986; Finland, Austria, Finland, and Sweden in 1995 – took place against a backdrop of peaceful economic growth and expansion. Membership of the European Economic Community, which became the European Communities, which became the European Union, was perceived as both a badge of democratic legitimacy and a surer route to economic prosperity than membership of the rival economic club, the European Free Trade Association.

Meanwhile, gradually, the USSR was dwindling and failing. Then the Soviet Union collapsed. The Berlin Wall came down. The Warsaw Pact satellite states recovered their independence and threw in their lot with the European Union. It was all going so well.

And then, in short order, came the global financial crisis in 2007-2008, a generalised failure to respond adequately to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in February-March 2014, and the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the bizarre act of self-harm by a departing Member State that was Brexit occupied far too much EU bandwidth between 2016-2020, and distracted attention from other more important issues for the European Union to grapple with.

There are now big global issues on the table, such as climate change and environmental damage, migration (induced both by climate change and by wars and/or instability elsewhere in the world), the economic rise of China and India, and the increased power and influence of the ‘global South’. And, right on our doorstep, we now have the unthinkable. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 22 February 2022, we again have war in Europe.

As I participate in this 20th anniversary conference in Vilnius, I personally do not perceive Ukraine’s struggle against the Russian bear as being, to quote Neville Chamberlain, ‘a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing’.Footnote 5 Half my family came from Lithuania. I have sailed out of Klaipeda to participate in the Tall Ships RaceFootnote 6 (in 2009, on SørlandetFootnote 7). I have visited the Curonian Spit with kind Lithuanian friends; and I have seen closed trains waiting to depart from the special platform at Vilnius railway station (‘destination: Kaliningrad’Footnote 8). Speaking with you here today in a Baltic republic, having spent the last two days in Czechia and just transited through Poland, I feel very keenly that there is nothing ‘faraway’ or ‘remote’ about the danger that is facing the European Union. It’s Ukraine today. But if Putin’s ambitions to rewrite the glory days of the Russian Empire go unchecked, then Lithuania and Poland follow tomorrow.

This is a new world, my masters – and not a ‘brave’ new world.Footnote 9

Along with the US and the UK, the European Union has shown commendable support for Ukraine as it fights our collective battle against a flagrant violation of international law, of the peaceful international rules-based order. Ukraine’s citizens are putting their lives on the line – to which I can only say, ‘ Слава Україні! Героям слава’Footnote 10 The necessity for serious security and defence collaboration is becoming more and more self-evident, and the EU has an emerging and important role to play in parallel with NATO. We really do need all men and women of goodwill on board to confront and resist a common, undemocratic, and aggressive enemy in Russia.

I hope with all my heart that the United Kingdom – my country of birth, albeit not my country of present engagement – will be able to collaborate with the European Union as a trustworthy partner in this critical endeavour. The partnership will not, however, be between the United Kingdom and the same European Union that the UK voted to leave in its 2016 referendum. It will be with the new European Union that will emerge – that will have to emerge – as the EU reforms and re-energises itself, as further Member States accede, and as that new European Union responds and adapts to a changing world order.

I emphasise, deliberately, the ‘new European Union’, because the EU has never stood still. I have watched it grow and in growing change, ever since I stood in Cambridge marketplace as a young idealistic student, distributing leaflets urging my fellow-citizens to vote for the UK to remain in the European Economic Community in the 1975 referendum. Each time that new Member States have joined, the European Union has been enriched by the new entrant.

The extraordinary adventure that is the European project has a challenging future ahead of it. However, history has shown time and again that it has always made most progress in times of crisis. It remains a noble and exciting endeavour.