European Union leaders are coming around to the geopolitical necessity of embracing Ukraine, Moldova and western Balkan countries as future EU members, but will struggle to reform the bloc to make it fit for enlargement.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust EU expansion back on to the agenda after two decades in which governments procrastinated over admitting six small western Balkan states with a combined population of 20 million. These countries were given a “European perspective” in 2003, but have done little since then to reform themselves and have long felt unwanted in Brussels. Vladimir Putin is also playing on frozen conflicts or unresolved disputes in Moldova, Georgia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to destabilise Europe’s borderlands.
