Wider Europe

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm drilling down on two major issues: Georgia's chances of getting EU candidate status this year and the EU's first tentative steps to prepare for new member states

Brief #1: Why Georgia Could Still Get EU Candidate Status This Year

What You Need To Know: This week, the European Commission will give an "oral update" on how Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova are faring on their respective EU membership paths. This update will first be given to ambassadors of the 27 EU member states in Brussels on June 21, and then in Stockholm when the European affairs ministers from all the bloc's capitals meet for an informal EU general affairs council.

Don't expect this update to be very detailed; it is essentially a midterm review of the proper EU enlargement package that the European Commission will present in the second half of October. That package will give a thorough assessment and, crucially, recommendations on how to proceed with the trio -- recommendations that the member states later in December, via unanimity, will either endorse or reject.

The smart money, according to several officials I have spoken to on background who are familiar with the matter, is that there will be a green light by the end of the year for Moldova and Ukraine to start EU accession negotiations. The reasoning is that they are progressing well on the various conditions that were given to them in 2022 when they became official EU candidate countries.

Deep Background: The picture is less clear, though, when it comes to Georgia. Unlike Chisinau and Kyiv, Tbilisi did not get candidate status last year but currently sits one rung below the pair as a potential candidate country.

The Georgian government says they are hoping for a candidate status recommendation from the European Commission and EU member states this year and that they are well on their way to fulfill all 12 recommendations given to them last year by Brussels, apart from one: the need to address the issue of political polarization in the country, which the government claims has not been possible due to a noncooperative opposition.

EU officials I spoke with are less enthusiastic about Georgia's progress, though, with some even questioning whether Tbilisi is really interested in closer EU ties at the moment. They point to recent events such as the attempt to enact a foreign agent law and the resumption of flights to Russia as recent examples.

Yet despite all that, there is still very much a chance that the European Commission could recommend candidate status for Georgia in October and, by the end of the year, EU member states would be agreeable. After speaking with various EU officials, there are roughly four reasons that this may happen, even though Tbilisi is considered a long way from achieving all, or even most, of the dozen recommendations set out in the summer of 2022.

Drilling Down:

• The first reason is the sense that the EU, as harsh as it might sound, has "devalued" what it means to be a candidate country by awarding this status to Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of 2022. The status was given despite Sarajevo hardly meeting any of the 14 conditions or "key priorities," as they were called, that Brussels set out in 2019.
• In fact, the assessment that the European Commission gave Bosnia in the most recent enlargement report was scathing. An EU official described it to me as "the worst report on a country ever given by Brussels." Yet a few months later all was forgotten as Bosnia became a candidate country. Why? Partly because Moldova and Ukraine got candidate status earlier that year and some EU member states, notably Slovenia and Austria, were pushing for Sarajevo to be included as well as it looked to them like the Western Balkans, in the EU queue for so long, was being bypassed.
• Essentially all European countries that now want to join the EU are candidate countries -- the exception being Kosovo, which isn't recognized as an independent state by five EU member states and Georgia. So, the argument goes, it really wouldn't "cost" anything to let Bosnia in; it's seen by many EU officials and diplomats as low-hanging fruit.
• The second reason has to do with political momentum. Suddenly, EU enlargement is alive again after being moribund for a decade. As I describe in my second brief this week, EU member state officials are now actively talking about how an enlarged bloc would actually function.
• This momentum risks dying out as soon as next year as the EU, in 2024, will be entirely absorbed by the European Parliament elections in June and the subsequent jockeying among EU member states, political factions, and politicians to secure top positions such as the EU foreign policy chief, European Council and Commission presidents, and other important commission portfolios. There are no guarantees the potential changing of the guard in Brussels institutions will be friendly to enlargement. That has brought a sense of urgency to the proceedings and there is now a feeling that the time to make decisions on Georgia (as well as Moldova and Ukraine) is now, in order to "clear the decks" before a likely period of stagnation -- and some navel-gazing -- starts.
• A third argument that has been made to recommend giving Georgia candidate status is that it makes sense simply because Kyiv and Chisinau will get the green light this year to start accession talks. If that pair moves ahead and Georgia doesn't, there will be too much of a separation among the trio. Moldova and Ukraine are already one step ahead of Georgia, and there is a feeling in Brussels that their grouping should be maintained.
• So how to solve all of this? This leads us to the fourth reason Georgia still might get candidate status -- and it would be a classic "Brussels fudge" that I have come to understand is still on the table. It would mean Tbilisi gets candidate status but, at the same time, Brussels would add even more conditions for the country to comply with in order to reach the next stage -- opening accession talks. Brussels has a knack of being creative when inventing new conditions, and it would not be too much of a surprise if they added some more, possibly on the need to quickly align with EU foreign policy measures, for example.

Brief #2: How An Enlarged EU Could Function

What You Need To Know: The debate about how an enlarged EU should work is slowly gathering pace in various European capitals. Already last month, state secretaries for European affairs broached the topic and will do so again when they meet in Stockholm on June 21-22. EU leaders might also touch upon it when they gather in Brussels the following week.

A French-German working group on EU institutional reform, consisting of a dozen nongovernmental experts, was set up at the beginning of the year and is set to deliver its preliminary report in September. That might all sound very bureaucratic, but it is significant that the EU's two biggest member states are now openly and seriously considering enlarging the club, especially France, which for a long time has been quite skeptical about adding new members from the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. As one eastern EU official recently told me on background: "It is clear that we are no longer talking about 'if' when it comes to enlargement but rather 'how' and 'when.'"

Of course, no one can offer any firm timelines: Ultimately that depends on how quickly countries that want to join can reform, as well as how great the desire is in all 27 current members to welcome them to the bloc. But already by December, there is hope among EU officials I have spoken to that a clear path for EU reform should be ready and that this will be a key issue on which the European Parliament elections in June 2024 will be fought.

Deep Background: Ahead of the meeting in Stockholm this week, the Swedish European Union Affairs Minister Jessika Roswall sent a letter to her counterparts in other EU member states titled Getting Ready For The Future -- A Discussion On Policy Orientation In View Of A Future Enlargement.

Seen by RFE/RL, the letter offers few concrete details about what sort of changes the bloc will need going forward, but there are some outlines with Roswall noting that "importantly, to have a fruitful discussion of substance, the starting point should not be the issue of treaty reforms. Since initiating such a process at this point would be both divisive and cumbersome, it should be embarked upon only with a broadly shared view of what we need to change."

Treaty reform has long been a difficult issue in the EU considering that it tends to lead to time-consuming referendums in various member states, so the question will be how to avoid it if the EU is to expand to include large countries like Ukraine or all six Western Balkan states. The Swedish minister noted that a working dinner on EU reforms will take place on June 21 together with former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb and Italian political scientist Nathalie Tocci joining the ministers, followed by more discussions the next day on three broad themes that she describes as "the union's general policy objectives, budgetary and financial issues, and the institutional setup."

Drilling Down:

• The most obvious challenge is likely to be the budget. It is not only that there would need to be more net contributors -- currently there are only five western EU states that pay more than they take out from the EU budget. It is likely that the budget will have to be bigger. The current seven-year EU budget stands at 1.8 trillion euros (around $2 trillion), and it took four days and nights for EU leaders to agree on it. Should the budget be agreed by unanimity and every seven years, or should there be a longer budget perspective agreed in a smoother way?
• The question of moving away from decisions taken via unanimity to qualified majority voting, meaning 55 percent of member states representing at least 65 percent of the EU population voting in favor, is always a hot potato. One idea is to start using it when agreeing on human rights statements in foreign policy or approving EU civil missions.
• The trick to accomplishing this without the need to change EU treaties does already exist within current EU laws. So-called passerelle clauses would allow the move from unanimity to consensus in some policy areas. But that move would, of course, require unanimity. Another idea is to use "constructive abstention," which means that instead of vetoing, you just don't vote. This, for example, has allowed military neutral countries such as Austria to wave through EU money for arms to Ukraine.
• A lot of these clauses could also pertain to the enlargement process. Currently there are over 80 possibilities to veto progress of a candidate country. That could perhaps be reduced to just a few, such as a vote to start accession talks, and then a final vote to approve membership once the talks are concluded.
• There is also talk of "staged accession" -- something that might appeal to the six Western Balkans hopefuls that, for nearly two decades, have been sitting in the EU waiting room. This concept could offer "carrots" such as a gradual participation in various policy fields, increased access to EU financing, and also partial participation in EU institutions. There are various ways of doing it, but such measures might mean certain countries wouldn't have veto powers, or the right to have their own European commissioner, or be able to nominate judges to the European Court of Justice.

Looking Ahead

After his trip to the United States last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will make his way to another key alliance member, Germany, on June 19. While there, he will meet with the chancellor as well as the foreign and defense ministers. The upcoming July summit in Vilnius and what Ukraine could be offered both in terms of potential future membership and more immediate military aid will be high on the agenda. The leaders will also witness Air Defender 23, NATO's largest-ever air drill, involving 25 countries.

With Serbia and Kosovo once again on the brink, the EU is scrambling to come up with a diplomatic response. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is hoping to host both Serbian President Alexander Vucic and Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti in Brussels this week for what he is calling a "crisis management meeting." No date has been set, but it is clear it won't be a regular Brussels dialogue meeting between Belgrade and Pristina in which the EU, for over a decade, has attempted to normalize relations between the pair.

That's all for this week. Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @RikardJozwiak or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here.

Welcome to Wider Europe, RFE/RL's newsletter focusing on the key issues concerning the European Union, NATO, and other institutions and their relationships with the Western Balkans and Europe's Eastern neighborhoods.

I'm RFE/RL Europe Editor Rikard Jozwiak, and this week I'm drilling down on two major issues: what Ukraine can expect from the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, and if the EU has finally worked out a new migration policy.

Brief #1: What Will Ukraine Get At The Upcoming NATO Summit?

What You Need To Know: The NATO summit in Vilnius on July 11-12 will essentially focus on one thing: Ukraine and its relationship with the military alliance. Two things will for sure be offered to Kyiv. First, there will be an agreement on a multiyear, possibly even open-ended, assistance package to assist Ukraine in transitioning from Soviet-era military doctrine to NATO standards and weapons. This, of course, is already under way with all the weapons and training provided by Western allies since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A potential pot of 500 million euros ($538 million) a year has been touted to assist Ukraine, but that figure could rise or fall depending on the discussion in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The second deliverable Ukraine will likely receive is an update of the political relationship between Kyiv and the alliance. The current NATO-Ukraine Commission is set to become a fully-fledged NATO-Ukraine Council -- in essence meaning that Kyiv will be sitting at the table as an equal. In the commission previously, Ukraine was only invited to participate in meetings with the NATO member states, but now it can call a meeting whenever it wants, with NATO officials believing that a council will deepen cooperation in various policy fields.

Setting up the council with Ukraine is also seen as the morally right thing to do, as there is already a NATO-Russia Council, even though it has been dormant since early 2022. The hope among NATO officials is that the inaugural NATO-Ukraine Council will be chaired by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Vilnius, but it's more than possible that Hungary might spoil that party in July. For years, Budapest has blocked meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission over its testy bilateral relations with Kyiv, partly because of ethnic Hungarian minority rights in Ukraine.

Deep Background: More money and an upgraded meeting format will be very beneficial to Ukraine, but Kyiv is looking and hoping for more. Rather, the country wants to know when it can join the alliance, and what sort of security guarantees it can rely on until then. Those two questions will be on everyone's mind going into the two-day powwow. Kyiv was already promised future membership at NATO's Bucharest summit in 2008 and the alliance has since then continuously repeated that its door remains open. But it never offered a pathway, or in NATO terms, a Membership Action Plan (MAP).

So, in short, Vilnius cannot be another Bucharest. Yet, it is also clear that the offer of immediate membership for Kyiv won't be on the table in Lithuania. Western officials and politicians alike have pointed out that this doesn't make sense for a country in the middle of a war with a nuclear-armed neighbor. Instead, expect plenty of creativity on how the wording around future membership of the bloc will be phrased in the final summit declaration and something similar on security guarantees that might not make it into the final communique but is rather agreed on the sidelines.

Drilling Down:

• The drafting of the Vilnius summit declaration has just started, and the most ambitious language will be something akin to Ukraine receiving an "invitation to join NATO when conditions allow." The most controversial word in that sentence is "invite," which many might see as too much too soon. The most likely scenario is that there will be some sort of qualifier before it, such as "consider inviting" or "look into the possibility of inviting."
• Some eastern NATO members want a concrete timeline or plan for when Ukraine can join, but it is hard to agree on anything more precise when no one knows quite how the war will pan out. But their position is believed to be a key starting point for the negotiations.
• Security guarantees are splitting opinions as well. French President Emmanuel Marcon recently talked about "clear and tangible security guarantees" for Ukraine. He noted that Kyiv is already de facto being protected by the alliance and is so well-equipped that it needs to be "reanchored" in some sort of security framework.
• Much talk has focused on an "Israel scenario" -- essentially meaning arming the country to the teeth. But there are certain issues with that. One is that Israel is a nuclear power; Ukraine isn't, but it is fighting one. Israel also sometimes strikes deep into neighboring countries to secure its safety, sometimes even as far as Iran. It is believed that Ukraine has carried out strikes on Russian territory, for example, using drones and artillery to target sites like fuel depots and pipelines. While NATO countries have generally looked the other way, it does make the alliance and its members very nervous.
• Of course, there are also the types of bilateral security guarantees given to the likes of Sweden and Finland by the United Kingdom and the United States during their ratification period to be NATO members. But, unlike Ukraine, those countries are not in a war that is likely to drag on. Former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been promoting a "security compact" in which a core group of allies provide yet unspecified security guarantees -- something that also has been referred to as "deterrence by denial." But what does it mean in practice? And would it eventually entail Western boots on the ground in Ukraine?
• Many officials I have spoken to on background, notably from eastern NATO members, see all the talk of various "security guarantees" as something of a fig leaf, so the alliance can avoid making any crucial decision on membership. They point out that the only security guarantee NATO can truly offer is its Article 5 guarantee -- an attack on one alliance member is an attack on all. For them, membership sooner rather than later is the only real guarantee. In Vilnius, the hard part will be finding the right language to satisfy everyone -- including, of course, Ukraine.

Brief #2: A New Agreement On Migrants Coming To The EU

What You Need To Know: Of all the crises that have hit the European Union in recent years, the migration crisis of 2015-16 was probably the one that truly threatened to rip the bloc apart. Frontline Mediterranean member states such as Greece, Malta, and Italy were furious about what they perceived as a lack of solidarity from the rest; several eastern member states flatly refused to take in migrants; and countries such as Germany and Sweden saw a huge influx of new arrivals that has shaped political debates ever since. As one senior EU official recently put it in a briefing to journalists: "in Europe, you still lose or win elections on the issue of migration."

So, it was with a certain triumph that the bloc's interior ministers, after three years of difficult talks, on June 8 announced that they had reached an agreement of sorts to revamp the way the bloc handles all aspects of migration. It comes as so-called "irregular border crossings" at the EU's external borders are spiking. In the first four months of the year, the number of crossings reached nearly 81,000 -- 30 percent more than a year ago and the highest total for the January-April period since 2016. Most of those crossings are coming through what is called the Central Mediterranean route, meaning largely that people, mostly of African or Middle Eastern origin, are trying to get into Italy.

Deep Background: Italy, whose hard-right leader Giorgia Meloni has made limiting migration the cornerstone of her premiership, is the key player and has become more insistent on asking other member states to relieve some of the burden the country is currently facing. And while the entire issue is complex, with two legislative proposals underpinning the new migration pact, each of which has well over 100 pages, the rough battle lines are that many southern states want others in the EU to share the burden, while many northern countries fear that southerners are just letting in migrants so they can continue on to other EU states, a practice known as the secondary movement of migrants.

Ukrainian refugees are in a different situation. Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine last year, and for the first time ever, the EU triggered the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainians fleeing the war. That meant that they could get residence permits in the bloc and have access to local labor markets and other forms of welfare benefits. This measure was recently and unanimously prolonged by another year. So, for now, the 4 million Ukrainians currently residing in the EU are covered by the directive. In the future, that could well change.

Drilling Down:

• So, what is the centerpiece of the June 8 agreement? Essentially, it is to get rid of the long-standing current framework in which the first country that receives migrants, normally a Mediterranean EU member state, is legally required to process their asylum applications and send them back if they don't get refugee status.
• To avoid mandatory migrant quotas to ease the burden on the frontline states -- something that is anathema for some eastern member states -- a concept called "mandatory solidarity" is envisioned. You either accept a certain number of migrants per year based on criteria such as a member state's size and GDP per capita, or you can pay to opt out from the relocation program.
• For months, member states have been haggling about what price per migrant a country should pay to be able to opt out, settling in the end on 20,000 euros ($21,543) -- a figure derived by calculating the average cost to process and accommodate an asylum seeker for one year. Still many, notably in the east, are balking at such a high cost and have asked why they should pay when they are already hosting many Ukrainian refugees, which is a significant financial burden.
• The aim is to relocate some 30,000 people per year throughout the bloc. Should the target be missed, then EU states could be allocated a certain number of asylum seekers instead of sending them back to the first country of entry.
• The deal was sealed when Italy received assurances that it could reject migrants staying on its territory and when the number of countries that EU countries consider safe enough for denied applicants to be sent to was increased.
• More money for Tunisia was also promised, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announcing on June 11 that the country could receive as much as 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) to help the economy and prevent people from attempting to cross the Mediterranean in the first place.
• In the end, not all the 27 member states gave a thumbs-up to the agreement when voting in the EU's Council of Ministers. Bulgaria, Malta, Lithuania, and Slovakia abstained, while Hungary and Poland voted against, but the pact passed by qualified-majority voting -- 55 percent of member states, representing at least 65 percent of the EU population, voting in favor.
• Arguments ranged from the fact that 20,000 euros per migrant is too steep and, in fact, constitutes a compulsory relocation and that the pact will actually act as a trigger for people coming to Europe. Don't be surprised to see Budapest and Warsaw challenging the decision in court or even refusing to participate.
• But it doesn't stop there. What the 27 are trying to agree on is just something resembling a joint position to enter negotiations with the more migration-friendly European Parliament, which is a co-legislator together with the Council of Ministers on home-affairs issues. Expect talks and tricky negotiations to continue throughout the year and the pact to potentially be ready ahead of the European Parliament elections in June 2024, where it's likely to be a real hot-button issue.

Looking Ahead

EU member states might on June 14 finally agree on the bloc's next sanctions package on Russia. Presented in early May, many thought that it would be agreed quickly but approval has been held up, notably by Germany, which has been busy watering down a proposal that eventually could make the EU go after third countries and companies that the bloc deems to be intentionally circumventing sanctions on the Kremlin. Hungary and Greece have also reportedly been angered that some companies linked to Athens and Budapest have been put on a Ukrainian "name and shame list" of entities still doing business with Moscow and have said that Kyiv must do something about this before the new sanctions package can be green-lit.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are over in Turkey and this means that diplomatic efforts between Stockholm and Ankara will resume this week to find a way to lift the Turkish veto on Sweden's NATO accession. Senior civil servants from the two countries will meet in Turkey early this week before the defense ministers from both states are likely to discuss the issue again when they meet for the NATO defense ministerial meeting in Brussels on June 15-16. The alliance's goal is still that Sweden can become the 32nd NATO member before the Vilnius summit in mid-July, but the clock is ticking for the Turkish (and Hungarian) parliaments to overcome their objections and vote in favor of Swedish membership ratification.

That's all for this week. Feel free to reach out to me on any of these issues on Twitter @RikardJozwiak or on e-mail at jozwiakr@rferl.org.

Until next time,

Rikard Jozwiak

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