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The enlargement policy of the European Union from 2013 to 2022 was not only ineffective, but also lacked an active enlargement drive. Russia's war in Ukraine changed the equation of costs and benefits in favour of new members and gave the EU a geopolitical incentive to restart enlargement. Enlargement is not only a geopolitical strategy, however: it also requires successful state-building efforts in the neighbourhood. Moreover, it is closely interlinked with the EU's internal development. This article analyses the current evolution of the EU enlargement policy as it emerges from the interplay of geopolitics, state-building challenges, and the EU's internal dynamics. Drawing on original interviews with officials, the paper also presents three scenarios for the coming decade. The paper concludes that to achieve its foreign policy objectives in the neighbourhood, the EU cannot continue 'business as usual' with enlargement. On the contrary, the policy of 2013–2022 needs to be replaced by a more effective model that encourages candidate countries to undertake genuine efforts towards democratic development. At the same time, reforms and compromises are required at the EU's end. Finally, the EU needs to better address the security needs of the applicant countries already during the accession process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data cables, ports, and mobility are a rising theme in geopolitical competition, and the European Union (EU) also aims to develop a cutting-edge product for the fund-deficit connectivity market. Incapable of competing with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the quantity of investments, the EU's 1-year-old connectivity initiative Global Gateway aims to challenge it with quality, providing more democratic, secure, equal, green, transparent, and sustainable alternatives to lower-income partners. While the BRI has been accused of creating debt traps in the same context, this article analyzes whether there is a risk of the EU's norm-diffusing policy also having an undermining effect on partners' agency. Based on a systematic analysis of EU policy documents and strategic communications, the article identifies three categories for the EU's norms promotion: firstly, the support for regionalism, secondly, the prescribing of standards of connections, and thirdly, the defining of values to be applied in connectivity projects. The article argues that the EU communications reserve a limited role for the partners to participate in or to have control over the processes where values, norms, and standards of connectivity are created. The approach, unlikely to serve the EU's declared goal of equal partnerships, is rather found to respond to the competitive international context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Union (EU) treaties have introduced legal frameworks for differentiated integration in European foreign and security policy, but they have rarely been used. Instead, member states have engaged in informal practices of differentiated cooperation. Based on an analysis of effectiveness, accountability and legitimacy of differentiated cooperation in the Western Balkans, the Middle East Peace Process, negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme and the Ukraine crisis, we argue that differentiated cooperation has had positive outcomes when it has adhered to common EU values and positions. When this has not been the case, differentiation has undermined EU foreign and security policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]