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MaggiWuerze , 11 months ago Receive free European Union updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest European Union news every morning. Over breakfast in late June at the five-star Hotel Amigo in Brussels, the most powerful leaders of the EU began in earnest their discussions on how to bring Ukraine into the club. The heads of governments of the EU’s 10 largest states by population, including France, Germany, Poland and Romania, chewed over the myriad ways such a significant step would dramatically reshape the bloc. According to people briefed on the gathering, the informal talks made clear how many different issues were at stake — and how radically the union would need to adapt to take on such a historic expansion. Wheels were set in motion. The leaders present agreed to create a “workflow process” for future talks and, after the confab, national government officials began the tough task of coordinating positions. “We wanted to see if we could create sufficient political support to go forward,” says one of the people briefed. “It’s such a big challenge . . . The goal was to see the different views.” The meeting made one thing clear: it confirmed that an idea that might have seemed preposterous even 18 months ago is now being taken seriously. War in Ukraine radically altered the calculus. By brutally underscoring the danger of leaving states in a geopolitical ‘grey zone’, outside both Russia and western spheres, Moscow’s invasion sparked a profound shift in the EU’s enlargement policy from passivity to proactive strategising. A man walks by a damaged residential building in the city of Lyman, Donetsk region, Ukraine A damaged residential building in the city of Lyman, Donetsk region. War in Ukraine underscored the danger of leaving states in a geopolitical ‘grey zone’, outside both Russia and western spheres © AFP via Getty Images In the months that followed February 2022, the EU made Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina candidate countries and opened accession negotiations with Albania. Engagement with the four other official candidates — Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey — has also stepped up. While EU leaders talk of Ukraine being on “a path” to membership, many member state officials and diplomats privately question whether it will really happen. Not only is Ukraine a country at war, but it would be the bloc’s fifth largest member by pre-conflict population and its poorest by far, which has implications for how its budgets would be divided up. Yet it is also Kyiv’s bid, more than any other, that has raised profound questions about the future of the entire European project. Bar chart of GDP per head in 2023* ($’000) showing The accession countries are significantly poorer than existing EU member states “We have had to make a huge shift in our mindset since the start of the war in Ukraine. Now we see enlargement as something that has become inevitable, as something that is required to stabilise our continent,” says the person briefed on the breakfast meeting. “So, having understood that, we need to urgently work out how we go about all this, and the monumental consequences for our union in terms of finance and decision-making.” The war may have changed the political winds, but it has not altered the immutable challenges around the EU’s capacity for expansion. In Brussels, and across the union’s capitals, officials are not only asking if Ukraine can carry out the long list of reforms required to join the EU when the war is over, but whether the bloc can reform itself sufficiently to absorb Ukraine as well as a host of potential new members. With Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushing hard for an agreement to open accession talks by December, there is a rising sense of urgency that the EU’s capacity to accommodate new member states cannot simply be ignored by keeping the entry door shut. A protester holds a placard during a demonstration in support of Ukraine, during a Foreign Affairs Council meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels in January A demonstration in support of Ukraine during a Foreign Affairs Council meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels in January © John Thys/AFP/Getty Images “EU leaders are ready to take these questions on enlargement seriously — they realise there is a cost, and they also realise that enlargement will have an important bearing on the EU’s internal functioning,” says Luuk van Middelaar, founder of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics. The debate, says van Middelaar, is being framed in Brussels as one of “absorption capacity” — which sounds like a scientific concept regarding the EU’s ability to expand. “But in reality it is not,” he continues. “It is a highly political notion wrapped up in bureaucratic cloth.” ‘Smaller slice of the pie’ The debate on how expansion might change the EU has largely been conducted privately, as politicians seek to avoid stoking public debate over something potentially divisive that also remains a distant possibility. Many member states, for example, are at pains to find solutions that avoid reworking the EU’s overarching treaties, a lengthy and politically fraught process that would require referendums in many states, offering domestic flashpoints for Eurosceptic campaigns. But the decision to put “absorption capacity” on the agenda for discussions among the EU’s 27 leaders in Granada this October reflects the recognition that the topic can no longer be kept under wraps. “It’s about identifying the problems we need to solve before countries join,” says one EU diplomat. “We have to think through what it means . . . how do we ensure we keep the union functioning?” At this stage, discussions are more about identifying the questions enlargement would raise for the EU, not attempting to reach any policy decisions. That is understandable given how uncertain the outlook for enlargement actually is. Whereas the fall of the Iron Curtain and the desire to integrate former eastern bloc states such as Poland into western democracy and capitalism helped make a strong case for the big-bang round of accession in 2004 when 10 countries joined the bloc, this time the motivation to accept the current crop of candidates is less clear cut. Column chart of Population, 2023 (mn) showing Accession of all eight countries would increase the EU’s population by 30% This issue of absorption capacity boils down to two key topics. First, how would the EU reform its budget when faced with new members that would probably be net beneficiaries of EU funding? How would less rich member states respond to the idea of becoming net contributors? A second question is: what institutional reforms would be necessary to ensure the EU could ensure smooth decision-making processes if the union comprises as many as 35 capitals, up from the current 27. A failure to overhaul its procedures could hobble the EU, particularly in policy areas that require unanimity. Ukraine’s membership would weigh most heavily on the EU’s finances. As an internal Council of the EU note seen by the FT highlights, the two biggest areas of the EU budget are the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and cohesion, or regional spending, which together account for around 62 per cent of the EU’s seven-year budget or around €370bn each. Admitting Ukraine, with farmland that exceeds the size of Italy and an agricultural sector that employs 14 per cent of its population, would be a game-changer. It follows that Ukraine would become the biggest recipient of CAP funding, the majority of which comprises direct payments to farmers or income support. The consequences would be severe: other farmers in the union would have to accept much lower payments or the EU would need to agree a massive boost in its agricultural budget. <span style="color:#323232;">Ukraine has not even entered the EU yet, and already it has damaged the single market </span>
Receive free European Union updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest European Union news every morning. Over breakfast in late June at the five-star Hotel Amigo in Brussels, the most powerful leaders of the EU began in earnest their discussions on how to bring Ukraine into the club. The heads of governments of the EU’s 10 largest states by population, including France, Germany, Poland and Romania, chewed over the myriad ways such a significant step would dramatically reshape the bloc. According to people briefed on the gathering, the informal talks made clear how many different issues were at stake — and how radically the union would need to adapt to take on such a historic expansion. Wheels were set in motion. The leaders present agreed to create a “workflow process” for future talks and, after the confab, national government officials began the tough task of coordinating positions. “We wanted to see if we could create sufficient political support to go forward,” says one of the people briefed. “It’s such a big challenge . . . The goal was to see the different views.” The meeting made one thing clear: it confirmed that an idea that might have seemed preposterous even 18 months ago is now being taken seriously. War in Ukraine radically altered the calculus. By brutally underscoring the danger of leaving states in a geopolitical ‘grey zone’, outside both Russia and western spheres, Moscow’s invasion sparked a profound shift in the EU’s enlargement policy from passivity to proactive strategising. A man walks by a damaged residential building in the city of Lyman, Donetsk region, Ukraine A damaged residential building in the city of Lyman, Donetsk region. War in Ukraine underscored the danger of leaving states in a geopolitical ‘grey zone’, outside both Russia and western spheres © AFP via Getty Images In the months that followed February 2022, the EU made Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina candidate countries and opened accession negotiations with Albania. Engagement with the four other official candidates — Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey — has also stepped up. While EU leaders talk of Ukraine being on “a path” to membership, many member state officials and diplomats privately question whether it will really happen. Not only is Ukraine a country at war, but it would be the bloc’s fifth largest member by pre-conflict population and its poorest by far, which has implications for how its budgets would be divided up. Yet it is also Kyiv’s bid, more than any other, that has raised profound questions about the future of the entire European project. Bar chart of GDP per head in 2023* ($’000) showing The accession countries are significantly poorer than existing EU member states “We have had to make a huge shift in our mindset since the start of the war in Ukraine. Now we see enlargement as something that has become inevitable, as something that is required to stabilise our continent,” says the person briefed on the breakfast meeting. “So, having understood that, we need to urgently work out how we go about all this, and the monumental consequences for our union in terms of finance and decision-making.” The war may have changed the political winds, but it has not altered the immutable challenges around the EU’s capacity for expansion. In Brussels, and across the union’s capitals, officials are not only asking if Ukraine can carry out the long list of reforms required to join the EU when the war is over, but whether the bloc can reform itself sufficiently to absorb Ukraine as well as a host of potential new members. With Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushing hard for an agreement to open accession talks by December, there is a rising sense of urgency that the EU’s capacity to accommodate new member states cannot simply be ignored by keeping the entry door shut. A protester holds a placard during a demonstration in support of Ukraine, during a Foreign Affairs Council meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels in January A demonstration in support of Ukraine during a Foreign Affairs Council meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels in January © John Thys/AFP/Getty Images “EU leaders are ready to take these questions on enlargement seriously — they realise there is a cost, and they also realise that enlargement will have an important bearing on the EU’s internal functioning,” says Luuk van Middelaar, founder of the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics. The debate, says van Middelaar, is being framed in Brussels as one of “absorption capacity” — which sounds like a scientific concept regarding the EU’s ability to expand. “But in reality it is not,” he continues. “It is a highly political notion wrapped up in bureaucratic cloth.” ‘Smaller slice of the pie’ The debate on how expansion might change the EU has largely been conducted privately, as politicians seek to avoid stoking public debate over something potentially divisive that also remains a distant possibility. Many member states, for example, are at pains to find solutions that avoid reworking the EU’s overarching treaties, a lengthy and politically fraught process that would require referendums in many states, offering domestic flashpoints for Eurosceptic campaigns. But the decision to put “absorption capacity” on the agenda for discussions among the EU’s 27 leaders in Granada this October reflects the recognition that the topic can no longer be kept under wraps. “It’s about identifying the problems we need to solve before countries join,” says one EU diplomat. “We have to think through what it means . . . how do we ensure we keep the union functioning?” At this stage, discussions are more about identifying the questions enlargement would raise for the EU, not attempting to reach any policy decisions. That is understandable given how uncertain the outlook for enlargement actually is. Whereas the fall of the Iron Curtain and the desire to integrate former eastern bloc states such as Poland into western democracy and capitalism helped make a strong case for the big-bang round of accession in 2004 when 10 countries joined the bloc, this time the motivation to accept the current crop of candidates is less clear cut. Column chart of Population, 2023 (mn) showing Accession of all eight countries would increase the EU’s population by 30% This issue of absorption capacity boils down to two key topics. First, how would the EU reform its budget when faced with new members that would probably be net beneficiaries of EU funding? How would less rich member states respond to the idea of becoming net contributors? A second question is: what institutional reforms would be necessary to ensure the EU could ensure smooth decision-making processes if the union comprises as many as 35 capitals, up from the current 27. A failure to overhaul its procedures could hobble the EU, particularly in policy areas that require unanimity. Ukraine’s membership would weigh most heavily on the EU’s finances. As an internal Council of the EU note seen by the FT highlights, the two biggest areas of the EU budget are the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and cohesion, or regional spending, which together account for around 62 per cent of the EU’s seven-year budget or around €370bn each. Admitting Ukraine, with farmland that exceeds the size of Italy and an agricultural sector that employs 14 per cent of its population, would be a game-changer. It follows that Ukraine would become the biggest recipient of CAP funding, the majority of which comprises direct payments to farmers or income support. The consequences would be severe: other farmers in the union would have to accept much lower payments or the EU would need to agree a massive boost in its agricultural budget.
<span style="color:#323232;">Ukraine has not even entered the EU yet, and already it has damaged the single market </span>