Next week, the European Commission will publish its pre-enlargement policy reviews. Essentially, enlargement requires the EU to be able to function coherently with more members, finance more members and make its policies work for more members. It also potentially requires some complicated political reform.
The pre-enlargement policy reviews should give an idea on the Commission’s initial thinking on how to prepare the EU for enlargement — through deeper reforms, changes to existing policies, or simply better implementation and additional resources.
On 30 September, after almost two years of delays (initially, the Commission’s Communication from 2024 announced in-depth policy reviews will start in early 2025), the European Commission should publish its pre-enlargement policy reviews. These are important to analyse, for multiple reasons. Ever since enlargement became an EU priority once again, the paradigm was clear. While the candidate countries need to complete their internal reforms (which are annually evaluated by the Commission in the Enlargement Report, published in October-November) to allow their accession, the EU needs its own internal reforms as well.
The EU’s reform needs to make it functional with an increased number of Member States. The reform process should thus solve aspects such as institutional reform, financial and budgetary reform, policy reform or political reform.
The institutional reform should address decision-making and governance issues. One big reform would be to look at how unanimity is used for some decisions (including enlargement) and whether this can be made more flexible. The sanctions policy, for example, was occasionally blocked by one Member States, impeding the EU’s capacity to act. This is not the only area that would need reforming. Governance aspects would touch both the European Parliament and the European Commission.
Would the current model of one Commissioner per Member State remain sustainable with 30 or more Member States? Would the Parliament, currently with over 700 members, be further expanded and how should Parliament’s size and representation be managed in a larger Union? This block of reforms should feature prominently in the current reviews.
Financial and budgetary reforms are currently being discussed in the context of negotiations for the future EU multiannual budget. However, with new members in the future, the size and architecture of the Multiannual Financial Framework, its sources of financing (particularly new own resources) and the distribution policy towards policies (such as the Common Agricultural Policy or Cohesion Policy) and Member States (the new ones) will become fundamental questions to be resolved before new countries join.
Policy reform will certainly be needed. Some of the EU existing policies function for a certain number of Member States. They would need changes for a larger membership. One of the easy examples (to explain, not to handle) is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Initially, it was designed as a policy for 6 Member States. In time, with adaptations, it was able to accommodate 27, but will it be sustainable for 31 and more? At the same time, will it be sustainable for a country where agriculture plays such an important role, like Ukraine? These questions can be replicated across the other policies as well.
Finally, some of the changes could go beyond institutional, budgetary or policy adaptation and require political decisions, potentially including amendments to the EU Treaties and a broader redesign of how the Union operates. Furthermore, there are some cross-cutting issue, horizontal issues, such as values: rule-of-law, democracy and fundamental-rights. This is particularly relevant because the Commission said in its 2025 Enlargement Package that future Accession Treaties should contain stronger safeguards in all these fields.
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