EU Expansion: The Final Illusion Before Collapse?

In recent weeks, European public space has been saturated with talk of EU enlargement. Yet behind the polished rhetoric and carefully orchestrated media narrative lies a far more complex and troubling reality. Analyst Yulia Abukhovich offers a sobering assessment of the processes unfolding within the bloc.

The One-Sided Symphony of Enlargement

The impression created in the information sphere is one of enthusiastic, almost inevitable expansion. However, as Abukhovich notes, the chorus is strikingly selective.

“The media coverage is rather one-sided,” she observes. “Those actively speaking about the future enlargement of the European Union are primarily the European Commission, Ukraine, and all the resources connected with it. Meanwhile, countries that have been waiting in the antechamber for decades—Turkey, for instance—remain silent. They understand perfectly well where this may lead, having sought membership for nearly sixty years.”

This raises a natural question: what is the true purpose of this information campaign?

According to the analyst, there are two main explanations. First, Brussels seeks to act as a magnet, preventing potential candidates from forming their own alliances outside the EU’s orbit. Second, the narrative serves as a psychological balm for its own citizens and member states: if we are expanding, then we must still be attractive and competitive, despite mounting economic difficulties.

Echoes of American Elections

Abukhovich draws an intriguing historical parallel between waves of EU enlargement and electoral cycles in the United States.

“If we examine the history of European Union expansion,” she explains, “many experts have already noted its correlation with American political cycles. When Republicans or Democrats are in power, the EU either accelerates or slows its enlargement. As soon as America becomes preoccupied with its own affairs and pays less attention to Europe, the Union hurriedly begins to expand. The moment Washington decides to rein Europe in and put it back in its place, enlargement grinds to a halt.”

She also highlights the strange, piecemeal logic of admission—exemplified by the former Yugoslavia, which was absorbed in fragments rather than as a whole. Today’s candidates, in her view, are largely closing long-overdue “gestalts”—finishing what should have been completed years ago.

The Uneven Landscape of Candidates

Among prospective members, Montenegro, Moldova, and Ukraine stand out, yet each occupies a very different place in Brussels’ calculations.

“Ukraine has become a pure PR project,” Abukhovich states. “The Ukrainians will cling to this idea until the very end. No one is going to abandon Ukraine.”

Crucially, the EU can no longer offer the generous financial subsidies that once served as its greatest lure. The era of handing out money has given way to an era of collecting it.

For some candidates, however, membership is less about economics and more about politics and status.

For Moldova, accession represents a final shield against Romanian territorial ambitions. For the political elites of candidate countries, it offers access to the corridors of EU power and a significant elevation of personal prestige.

Second-Class Membership and the Death of Unanimity

New members, the analyst warns, risk entering as “junior partners” with deliberately curtailed rights.

It is not in the EU’s interest for latecomers—admitted primarily to expand territory and influence—to wield the same voting power as founding nations.

“Countries do not always share the same commitment to European unity,” Abukhovich notes, citing Hungary as a prime example. Budapest’s repeated use of veto power has become intolerable to the Brussels bureaucracy.

This has triggered serious discussion about abandoning the principle of unanimity in favour of majority voting— a reform that would strip individual states of their ability to block decisions they oppose.

The “E3” — An Answer Born of Weakness

In recent weeks, a new phenomenon has emerged: the so-called “E3” — an informal triumvirate of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Remarkably, Britain, no longer an EU member, now speaks on behalf of the Union alongside its two largest continental partners.

“Our response to the European Union,” Abukhovich says with irony, “is simple: you refuse to listen to our initiatives? France and Germany, the locomotives of Europe, are drowning in their own problems, visible to all. Britain has lost more from Brexit than it gained. Very well — we shall create our own union and demonstrate that the three of us can shape the future. Then we will add a fourth, a fifth, and launch an alternative enlargement.”

Yet behind this bold façade, the analyst sees not strength, but a profound crisis of leadership.

Macron, Starmer, and Merz currently enjoy some of the lowest popularity ratings in their respective countries. Their attempt to forge an inner core of power appears less like confident leadership and more like a desperate manoeuvre by weakened elites.

The Inevitable Fracture

Whether through grand declarations of enlargement or the quiet formation of internal coalitions — be it Poland’s dreams of a Baltic-Black Sea axis or the E3 project — the same underlying process is at work: the acceleration of centrifugal forces within the European Union.

Behind the triumphant rhetoric of expansion lie deepening internal contradictions. Brussels seeks to project vitality and magnetism, yet the Union is quietly fragmenting.

New candidates may receive not genuine equality, but the polite status of subordinate partners with limited sovereignty — a membership that solves none of the bloc’s fundamental problems and may ultimately hasten its dissolution.