Progressive visions for the future of EU enlargement 

Russia’s attack on Ukraine brought the issue of EU enlargement back to the fore. Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina are now official candidate countries, and Albania and North Macedonia have started accession negotiations. With ten potential new members, the question of fundamental EU reform to integrate more countries is becoming increasingly urgent. There are various proposals on how the EU could be reformed and how new states could be gradually integrated without directly attaining full membership. Together with progressive partners from all of the ten candidate countries, FEPS wanted to trigger the discussion on the future of EU enlargement policy between experts, MEPs, decision-makers and politicians from all candidate countries.

The main goals of the conference was:

• Discussing current proposals for the reform of EU enlargement policy, such as staged accession.
• Offering opportunities for networking and exchange between social democratic partners from the ten candidate countries and MEPs and experts from Brussels in a closed roundtable format.
• Developing progressive positions and proposals on the future of EU enlargement policy across the regions.

Key questions:

• What are the concrete proposals and models for gradual EU integration?
• What do the candidate countries think about new ways of EU integration?
• What are the most important hurdles to the admission of new members from the EU’s point of view?
• What problems and challenges do the prospective members share?
• What do progressive policy proposals on EU enlargement and reforms look like ahead of the European elections in 2024?

Target groups:

• Politicians, experts on EU enlargement as well as FES programme managers from the Western Balkans, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia (three persons per country).
• Progressive members of the European Parliament and EU experts from Brussels.

This was a closed-door event by invitation only.

For information regarding this event, please do not hesitate to contact Thainá Leite, FEPS Project Officer (thaina.leite@feps-europe.eu).

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