It was the 1er July 2013. Croatia then became the 28e State of the European Union (EU) after a national referendum in which the “yes” vote won with 66.27% of the votes. Since then, nothing. Ten years of pause during which we even saw the United Kingdom leave the Union, on January 31, 2020. A departure which crowned a long period of withdrawal and illustrated how much the last memberships in the east still did not seem to be digested.
But, that was before the war in Ukraine. It will have been enough for the Russian invasion to convince Brussels to launch, on June 23, the process of accession of Ukraine and Moldova. A way of expressing the solidarity of Europeans with regard to these countries threatened by Moscow since kyiv had requested this membership barely four days after the entry of the first Russian tank on its territory. It was enough for the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to exclaim: “The future of Europe is being written in Ukraine. In Brussels, we are now convinced that this war marks a radical break in the history of the Union. In short, there will be a before and an after.
The “big bang”
“A European Union of 35, or even 36 or even 37 Member States, enlarged towards the east, but also the south-east and the Balkans, seems inevitable in the long term”, writes Marc Semo in the daily The world. In reality, it is the whole evolution of the European Union which today seems upset. The last to realize this seems to have been France. While President Volodymyr Zelensky crisscrossed Europe talking about joining in 2026, Paris continued to assert that this membership would take “decades”, in the words of Emmanuel Macron on May 9, 2022 before the European Parliament. You don’t need to be an expert to know that with a GDP barely a quarter of Poland’s, endemic corruption, a flawed rule of law, Ukraine is light years away from satisfying to the 35 negotiating chapters that membership in due form requires.
However, last week, Emmanuel Macron had to face the facts and make a 180 degree turn. ” Yes she [l’Union européenne] must expand, yes, it must be redesigned, he said, […] this is the only way to respond to the legitimate expectation of the Western Balkans […] who are to enter the European Union. And the president concludes that this membership must go “as quickly as possible”!
What happened ? As Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev said, “It may seem impossible to integrate Ukraine, but it is even more impossible not to”. Not only did Ukraine pay the price in blood to get closer to Europe, but it will be remembered that the large demonstrations in Maidan Square in 2013 were triggered by the decision of the pro-Russian government to sign an agreement economic relationship with Russia rather than with the EU.
For Germany, there no longer seems to be any doubt that Ukraine will benefit from an accelerated, not to say expeditious, accession procedure. “Of course, Ukraine’s membership conditions are the same as for all other countries, but we should advance this important cause. Germany has a great responsibility in this respect,” affirmed Lars Klingbeil, chairman of the SPD, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
But if Ukraine joins the EU without respecting the usual rules, what will the countries that are already waiting in line say? Among them are Albania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia as well as Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Without forgetting Turkey, a candidate since… 1999! “We cannot say yes to Ukraine and Moldova while leaving the Balkan train at a standstill, because it is twenty years now that the EU, at a summit in Salonica, recognized the European perspective for these countries”, declared to the World the great specialist in Eastern Europe Jacques Rupnik. Note that with a net trade surplus, it is Europe that benefits the most from the Balkans, 70% of whose trade depends on the EU. In Brussels, no one imagines that these countries will be satisfied with the consolation prize offered to them by Emmanuel Macron last year: a European political community which is in reality only an informal forum open to all.
Admittedly, before the integration of some of these countries, some contradictions will have to be resolved, such as the refusal of Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, Romania and, of course, Serbia to recognize the Kosovo. But since Emmanuel Macron gave in to German pressure, there is little doubt that the process of joining the EU has started up again at high speed. Olaf Scholz says he wants to avoid that, faced with a closed door, these countries do not turn to Russia or to China. We can also guess that these new memberships will only further expand the economic hinterland of Berlin, which had also largely benefited from the last wave of membership in the east.
The shift to the east
Admittedly, France claims to want to set conditions. But how long will they hold out against the eagerness of Germany, the United States and its European allies to unite against Russia? Emmanuel Macron may evoke integration “in stages”, the need to “invent several formats” and a Europe at several “speeds”, these ideas find little echo elsewhere in Europe. We are therefore witnessing a real tilting of the EU towards the East. Tomorrow, with some 40 million inhabitants, Ukraine will be the fifth largest country in the Union, behind Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and just ahead of Poland.
The center of gravity of the EU, wrote the former Minister for European Affairs Pierre Lellouche, “has indeed swung towards Central and Eastern Europe, that is to say towards the countries most concerned and the most determined to do away with what they see as Russia’s ‘imperialist DNA’”.
It is no coincidence that this shift comes at a time when the gap has never been so wide between Paris and Berlin, as recognized recently in the review The Great Continent former European Commissioner and Director General of the World Trade Organization Pascal Lamy. “Putin’s war has brought to the surface the three subjects on which the French and the Germans have never agreed, he says: energy, defense and the European budget. Nuclear versus coal, American dependence versus strategic autonomy, spendthrifts versus frugal. He could have added immigration.
However, if the enlargement of the European Union will not only strengthen Germany’s hold and alignment with the United States, it risks further reducing the community of views and solidarity between countries. members. This was also noted by Pascal Lamy: “Enlargement strengthens Europe geo-economically, but not necessarily geopolitically. Enlargement is good for economic power […] but can be negative, as it increases the diversity of perceptions about security and defence. »
How, in this context, will the member countries be able to accept the new delegations of sovereignty demanded by Olaf Scholz? Let us recall that scalded by the massive adhesion of the former countries of Eastern Europe, Jacques Chirac had introduced in the French Constitution article 88-5 submitting to referendum “any bill authorizing the ratification of a treaty relating to the accession of a State to the European Union”. An article that can only be circumvented if the two chambers agree by a three-fifths majority.
Last March, the Eurobarometer revealed that with 57% of negative opinions, France was the EU member country whose population was the most Eurosceptic. It is hard to believe that on the eve of a new enlargement, this distrust will fade. How could it be otherwise in this new Europe where France’s position is likely to be increasingly marginal?