A New Chance for a Wider EU: What the Emerging Enlargement Debate Reveals about Europe's Future

EU enlargement has entered a new political phase. The pacing question is whether enlargement can be delivered under fundamentally different geopolitical and institutional conditions as compared to the past. Candidates' divergent trajectories expose the limits of the current process: Montenegro is targeting accession by 2028, Ukraine, Moldova and Albania are advancing through negotiations, while North Macedonia, a candidate since 2005, has yet to close a single chapter.

The geopolitical backdrop shifted with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s rise to power for a second time. The European Union is standing in the world more alone than ever, as Russia has rebuilt itself into a war economy on the EU's border, the United States is reassessing its security role in Europe, China continues its economic and technological rise, while Brexit has reduced the EU‘s relative international weight. The imbalance in defence spending is stark: in 2024, the United States devoted 3.4% of GDP to its military and Russia 7.1%, against just 1.9