Urban Ahlin’s essay is convincing as he clearly demonstrates the need for a stronger and more coherent approach to the Union’s easterly neighbours to further the EU’s interests in the region. What is not convincing is the idea that to achieve this, “the prospect of eventual EU membership … is absolutely crucial”.

 

The Union’s policy of using enlargement as a “surrogate foreign policy”, which Mr Ahlin in effect proposes to continue, has already left it effectively committed to enlarging itself to a size well beyond what many EU citizens have so far registered. The existing EU-25 will soon be 27. With Montenegro and Kosovo widely expected to follow, there will soon be seven western Balkans States all with the intention of holding the EU to its Thessaloniki commitment that “the future of the Balkans is within the European Union”. It remains unlikely that the EU would reject any applications from Iceland, Norway or Switzerland. If Turkey manages to keep its reforms on track then suddenly the EU is a behemoth of over 600m citizens with 38 states around the Council table, all of this even before it deals with its six eastern neighbours – Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbijan and Georgia.

 

Urban Ahlin talks of the benefits of “soft power”, but surely this should be based more on generous terms of trade and aid packages in return for social, political, and economic reforms, not excluding membership but equally not giving the air of inevitability that comes with a membership perspective. Giving such a membership perspective to all those who meet the criteria and are willing to undertake the necessary reforms takes away control of the future size of the Union from the member states themselves and means that enlargement progresses almost without regard for any internal difficulties and governance issues the Union may face. As Dov Lynch has asserted in his recent Chaillot Paper published by the Paris-based Institute for Security studies “the EU must reinvent itself as a foreign policy actor that must advance its interests abroad without using the policy of enlargement”. That is to say that the EU needs to develop a modus operandi towards states which it wishes to influence but is not, as yet, sure that it wants to incorporate into its increasingly complex, delicate and enlarged institutions.

 

Ahlin is right in saying that more energy, money and commitment need to be invested in the ENP, and that different policies are needed for the eastern neighbours as distinct from the Mediterranean states. The EU must come up with a way of telling its eastern neighbours that while membership is not ruled out in the long term, a perspective is not available now, but reforms should begin anyway, as they are, in any case, in the best interests of each state. Such an approach is also more appropriated in the face of a resurgent Russia, unconvinced by talks of “soft power” and unafraid to use what might be termed “energy power” to further its own interests.