Time to recognise Ukraine as European and shake up the EU enlargement process

Summary:

The EU has seen enlargement as a technical process of building convergence in norms to the benefit of candidate countries. It has regarded geopolitical considerations as external to this process and incompatible with the imperative of domestic reform. Yet now – more than ever – a union of norms is not only a geopolitical union but also to the benefit of the EU itself.

The EU’s response to Russia’s war on the rules-based international order must be to offer a clear European perspective to both the three Eastern applicants and the accession candidates in the Western Balkans.