IRMO Brief 07/2022, EU Enlargement Demon: Between Bureaucratic Excuses and Political Instrumentalization

“All three countries (Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia) are part of our European family. We’ve never let any doubt about that” greeted Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, the granting of candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova at the meeting of the European Council on 23rd of June 2022. On that day, the member states expressed their conviction: Ukraine is a European state, and it fulfills the relevant pre-accession criteria, which require a formal admission process after a state has submitted the relevant application.The granting of candidate status seems bizarre in the light of the long debates on enlargement over the past twenty years. Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine are among the states for which the Neighborhood Policy as an instrument was designed that did not include an immediate prospect of accession.

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