Four Conversations on Preparing the Candidates and the Union for Enlargement

Why Strategic Conversations?

European integration has always been shaped by ideas as much as by institutions. While treaties, negotiations and reforms define the formal architecture of enlargement, the future of Europe is equally influenced by the strategic conversations that precede political decisions. As the European Union enters a period marked by geopolitical competition, democratic uncertainty and institutional transformation, enlargement itself is becoming the subject of a new generation of questions.

The debate is no longer confined to the pace of negotiations or the fulfilment of accession benchmarks. It increasingly concerns the strategic purpose of enlargement, the resilience of democratic institutions, the consequences of prolonged uncertainty, the role of anticipatory governance and the societal foundations upon which European integration ultimately depends.

These are not questions that lend themselves to simple or definitive answers. They require dialogue between European institutions, national governments, researchers, civil society and citizens. They require the willingness to look beyond immediate political developments and consider the longer-term choices that will shape the future of both the European Union and its candidate countries.

PRESPA Strategic Conversations is conceived as a contribution to that dialogue.

Rather than offering policy prescriptions, the series seeks to stimulate informed reflection on emerging issues relevant to European integration, democratic governance and strategic resilience. Each issue brings together a small number of strategic conversations intended to encourage debate, challenge assumptions and explore new perspectives on the evolving European project.

Beyond Momentum

Enlargement requires changes in the countries seeking membership and, in the Union, they seek to join. These transformations proceed through different institutions, political calendars and forms of accountability. Candidates are assessed against accession conditions. Within the EU, governments negotiate how a larger membership would affect common policies and their own influence. Connecting these processes is becoming a central question of European integration.

Two Commission publications provide the starting point. Preparing for a wider Union, adopted on 6 October 2026, addresses the EU’s preparations for enlargement. The Enlargement Package published on 4 November assesses candidate progress and presents indicative roadmaps for Montenegro, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine, alongside work on a more structured approach to gradual integration. These initiatives bring the relationship between preparation and accession into sharper focus.

Reading the texts together raises a question that neither an annual assessment nor an institutional reform agenda can settle alone. How can progress on one side generate a credible response on the other? More detailed conditions may improve predictability, yet they cannot eliminate political disagreement. Earlier participation may strengthen preparedness, while leaving the final membership decision unresolved. Safeguards may make enlargement more acceptable, but also change what newcomers understand membership to mean.

The first conversation examines how candidate reforms and EU preparations could become reciprocal commitments. The second asks how reform assessments establish trust and how that trust might be protected after accession. The third considers what gradual integration changes for institutions and societies before membership. The fourth explores what are the political bargains through which a larger Union could acquire democratic consent.

North Macedonia offers a revealing perspective, but these questions extend across Europe. Candidates have different capacities and face different political obstacles. Existing members also disagree over the implications of enlargement. Treating either group as a single actor would conceal much of what determines the outcome.

Together, the conversations explore a provisional proposition: enlargement becomes credible when verified reforms, practical preparation and political authorisation reinforce one another. Their interdependence can support delivery. It can also allow responsibility to circulate indefinitely between candidates and the Union.

Strategic Conversation I

A Shared Path to Membership

The Question

Accession is commonly described as a sequence in which candidates meet conditions and the EU recognises their achievements. The Union’s own preparations follow a less familiar sequence. Different governments must agree on matters that affect budgets, institutions and domestic political interests. Bringing these processes together requires more than compatible timetables. What would make their commitments reciprocal, while preserving the principle that each country advances through its own reforms? Could a shared path make responsibility more visible without giving either side a new reason to postpone action?

The Context

The October Communication sets out EU preparations across governance, values, policies and the budget. November’s indicative roadmaps organise the next steps for four negotiating countries. Their status matters: Commission proposals and indicative milestones are distinct from decisions taken by member states or guarantees of an accession date.

This distinction identifies a coordination problem. A Commission assessment can establish that a condition has been met, but the next political decision belongs to other institutions. Likewise, identifying a necessary EU adaptation does not ensure that governments will authorise or finance it. A credible sequence must connect actors whose powers and incentives differ. Simply placing their activities on a common calendar would leave those differences intact.

The Conversation

Reciprocity need not mean negotiating away accession standards. A candidate’s responsibility to protect judicial independence cannot depend on whether member states have settled a budget dispute. Equally, a government that delivers a verified reform needs some reasonable expectation about the response. Otherwise, conditionality may remain demanding while becoming less capable of changing behaviour.

One possibility is to distinguish obligations to reform from obligations to decide. Candidates could remain accountable for agreed results. EU actors could become more visibly accountable for considering those results within a defined period, explaining decisions and identifying the conditions for reconsideration. Such an approach would preserve political judgment while reducing the space for unexplained inactivity.

There are limits. Elections can change governments and their mandates. A serious democratic reversal may justify changing an expected sequence. An unforeseen crisis may affect the Union’s capacity to act. A rigid timetable could produce artificial compliance or pressure institutions to overlook genuine shortcomings. The question is therefore how commitments can remain dependable while allowing reasoned revision.

North Macedonia makes the distinction between reform delivery and accession movement especially relevant. Progress under one instrument does not automatically fulfil the conditions attached to another. Recognising that difference is necessary for honest assessment. It also raises a broader question about how citizens can understand a process in which achievements may be acknowledged without producing the advancement they expected.

Perhaps credibility depends less on an unconditional promise of entry than on a clear account of who must act next. Where a step is delayed, can the responsible institution explain why, distinguish the unresolved issues and state what would permit movement? That would allow debate about responsibility to rest on decisions that can be examined.

Why This Matters?

A shared path would have value if it made delay explainable and responsibility contestable. It could also fail by multiplying commitments that nobody can enforce. The strategic question is whether coordinated preparation can strengthen the link between effort and advancement without turning the internal difficulties of either side into an indefinite condition imposed on the other.

Strategic Conversation II

Merit, Trust and Safeguards

The Question

Accession assessments ask whether a country is prepared to assume membership obligations. Membership also depends on confidence that those obligations will continue to be respected when accession incentives have weakened. Stronger safeguards promise protection against that risk. They also raise questions about how trust is established and how equal membership is understood. What evidence makes democratic reform credible over time? Can additional protections help the Union welcome new members, or could they institutionalise a lasting presumption that newcomers are less trustworthy than existing members?

The Context

The October Communication proposes stronger accession safeguards, including a temporary institutional mechanism addressing serious breaches of EU values and sincere cooperation. These are proposals for future accession arrangements, rather than rules already binding on new members.

The annual assessment process and proposed protections address different moments in the same relationship. Before accession, the issue is whether institutions can fulfil their obligations. Afterwards, it is how the Union responds when commitments are seriously breached. Connecting these moments raises an evidentiary problem. Laws and organisational changes can be recorded, while independence, restraint and accountability become visible through repeated conduct. A persuasive assessment must explain the relationship between formal preparation and performance in practice.

The Conversation

Merit is difficult to establish when the object being assessed is institutional behaviour. A new judicial council may satisfy a legislative benchmark while appointments remain vulnerable to political influence. A formal consultation procedure may exist while critical organisations cannot influence decisions. Reform can be real but incomplete, and its durability may remain uncertain even after several positive assessments.

This uncertainty supports the case for safeguards. If the Union possesses credible means of responding to serious breaches, existing members may be more willing to accept accession. Protection after entry could reduce pressure to demand impossible certainty beforehand. On this interpretation, safeguards help move enlargement forward by making its risks manageable.

The alternative interpretation concerns unequal exposure. If special mechanisms apply to newcomers while comparable behaviour among existing members faces less effective scrutiny, the Union may create different practical conditions of membership. Formal acceptance of common values would coexist with unequal confidence in states’ ability to uphold them. That could weaken the legitimacy of enforcement even where intervention is justified.

The choice is not exhausted by accepting every safeguard or rejecting additional protection. Their design can be examined through questions of evidence, proportionality, review and remedy. What conduct triggers action? Who establishes the breach? How can a state challenge a decision? What demonstrates that a restriction should end? These questions determine whether safeguards protect shared commitments or sustain a hierarchy of trust.

Democratic resilience also depends on actors beyond government. Journalists, civic organisations, opposition parties and independent institutions can reveal whether reforms work. Their ability to scrutinise power is part of preparedness itself. A framework that measures compliance without protecting those who contest official accounts could produce confidence in the assessment process while missing weaknesses in the political system being assessed.

Why This Matters?

Safeguards connect the decision to enlarge with the character of membership afterwards. Their credibility depends on protecting the Union while respecting the rights of the state concerned. The wider question is whether lessons from democratic backsliding can improve common standards of membership, rather than concentrating the burden of institutional distrust on countries that have yet to join.

Strategic Conversation III

Integration Before Membership

The Question

Gradual integration is often defended through the benefits it brings before accession. A different question concerns the capacities and relationships it produces. Does earlier participation help candidates govern as future members, and help EU institutions learn to work with them? Participation could deepen cooperation while leaving influence unevenly distributed. It could also create constituencies invested in completing accession. Under what conditions does integration before membership change the ability of both sides to take the final step, rather than simply improve the management of the period before it?

The Context

The October Communication presents gradual integration as conditional, reversible preparation for accession. November’s Package develops a more structured framework, including opportunities in energy, transport, digital cooperation and defence.

These fields involve implementation across borders. Opening an opportunity does not by itself ensure that a regulator, municipality or business can use it. Participation requires expertise, infrastructure and workable arrangements between authorities. Its significance therefore extends beyond eligibility. It concerns whether institutions acquire experience, whether citizens gain usable rights or services, and whether cooperation reveals problems early enough to address them before membership. These are questions that a catalogue of instruments alone cannot answer.

The Conversation

The strongest case for gradual integration is learning through participation. An administration preparing to enforce common rules may learn more from working with its counterparts than from repeatedly revising an action plan. An EU body working with candidate authorities can identify its own operational gaps. Preparation becomes a shared activity whose results can be observed.

This suggests a different way to judge success. The number of programmes opened or agreements signed would tell only part of the story. More revealing questions concern what participants can now do, whose problems are being resolved and whether the experience reduces obstacles to membership. A formally available opportunity may have little effect if smaller institutions lack the staff or resources to use it.

Distribution also matters. Firms with strong administrative capacity may benefit earlier than local enterprises. Central authorities may gain access while municipalities remain disconnected. If participation rewards those already closest to EU standards, it could widen inequalities within candidate societies. Support for adaptation would then become central to the political legitimacy of gradual integration.

Influence presents another difficulty. Earlier integration involves accepting obligations shaped largely elsewhere. Consultation and technical cooperation may improve the quality of implementation, but they differ from representation as a member. How much meaningful participation can be offered before accession, and how should its limits be explained? Unrealistic language about belonging could undermine the confidence that practical benefits are intended to build.

Finally, reversibility affects investment. The possibility of suspension can protect standards, but uncertainty about its use may discourage long-term commitments. Institutions and businesses need to understand the conditions for access, the consequences of a breach and the route to restoration. The relevant tension is between protection against non-compliance and enough predictability for cooperation to become durable. Whether this strengthens the demand for accession or reduces its urgency remains an empirical question.

Why This Matters?

Gradual integration can be assessed by the capabilities, relationships and opportunities it creates. Its strategic value depends on whether those changes make membership more achievable and more meaningful. That requires attention to who participates, who benefits and how cooperation affects influence. Tangible benefits matter, but their connection to the broader accession process still needs to be demonstrated.

Strategic Conversation IV

The Politics of a Larger Union

The Question

A workable accession process still requires a political agreement to enlarge. Governments must decide how a larger Union will distribute resources and authority, and citizens must be able to understand and contest those choices. Candidates have their own expectations about influence and equal participation. What kind of bargain could reconcile these interests? Can enlargement gain durable support if its costs are discussed mainly within existing member states, while prospective members are expected to accept arrangements whose political consequences they had limited opportunity to shape?

The Context

The October Communication recommends qualified majority votingfor intermediary accession decisions, while retaining unanimity and ratification for accession itself. It also addresses policy adaptation and funding. These proposals bring political choices into view without settling them.Changing how an intermediate decision is taken would not eliminate the need for a final agreement. Nor would technical preparation resolve disagreements about how costs and opportunities are shared. The political challenge is to understand which interests might converge around enlargement, which groups anticipate losses and how those concerns enter public debate. Support for the principle of a larger Union may coexist with opposition to its specific terms.

The Conversation

Enlargement debates often divide participants into supporters and opponents. That distinction can conceal disagreement within both groups. A government may favour accession while seeking protection for a domestic sector. A political party may endorse a candidate’s European future while opposing a change to voting arrangements. Negotiation concerns the distribution and timing of change as well as the destination.

There are legitimate reasons to debate these effects. Common resources are finite, representation matters and integration produces adjustment costs. Avoiding such questions in the name of strategic urgency could make enlargement vulnerable when detailed terms become public. The challenge is to distinguish a contest over a workable settlement from demands that make agreement progressively less attainable.

Bilateral disputes test that distinction. A member state may understand its concern as essential to the credibility of cooperation. A candidate may understand the same demand as unrelated to shared accession standards. Moving some decisions away from unanimity could change bargaining power, but would not itself reconcile these interpretations. A political settlement would still need to explain which concerns belong in the accession framework and how their resolution can be recognised.

Public consent also depends on when debate occurs. If parliaments and affected communities enter only after the central bargain has been negotiated, scrutiny may appear to threaten an accomplished agreement. Earlier debate could expose difficulties while there is still room to change the terms. It could also reveal constituencies that gain from enlargement but remain absent from national arguments about its costs.

Prospective members have a stake in this discussion. Changes to policies, representation and transitional arrangements will shape their experience of membership. Their involvement would raise practical questions about participation before entry, but excluding them risks producing a settlement described as common preparation that was largely negotiated by one side. A durable bargain needs political ownership beyond the governments authorised to sign it.

Why This Matters?

A larger Union must be politically sustainable after the accession ceremony. That depends on whether citizens can recognise the bargain, understand how their interests were represented and hold decision-makers accountable. The question is how preparation can make disagreement negotiable, rather than allowing unresolved distributional and constitutional choices to return as a final obstacle when candidates have completed their reforms.

Sources:

The numbered references identify factual anchors. The discussions develop analytical interpretations and questions rather than attribute those interpretations to the Commission.

[1] European Commission • Preparing for a wider Union • COM 2026 705 final • 6 October 2026

Relevant sections: II on governance, values, policies and budget; III on gradual integration; IV on accession safeguards. Recommendations and proposed arrangements are described as proposals throughout this issue.

[2] European Commission • Official presentation of the 2026 Enlargement Package • 4 November 2026

The November factual anchors are verified against the Commission’s official presentation. Detailed country rankings, roadmap milestones and target accession dates are not asserted here. Before publication, the complete November Communication and roadmap annexes should be checked against the framing and any subsequent factual additions.

[3] EU Delegation to North Macedonia • Country report summary • 4 November 2026

The summary records Reform Agenda achievements alongside outstanding constitutional amendments and fundamentals requirements. These are distinct assessments and are not treated as interchangeable measures of accession readiness.