Deepening the Politicisation of EU Enlargement Policy? The European Political Community and its Impact on the Western Balkans

On 9 May 2022, right at the closing ceremony of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE) in Strasbourg, President Macron, in his role as the President of the Council of the European Union, launched the European Political Community (EPC). This proposal came in the exceptional context created by the war in Ukraine, but also the stagnating EU enlargement in the Western Balkans and the emergence of new candidate countries. The EPC was defined as a new intergovernmental forum for political and strategic decisions and its objective would be to foster political dialogue and cooperation to strengthen the security, stability and prosperity between EU member states and Non-EU member states who share the same European values (including Great Britain or Turkey). The proposal was hailed and criticized by both decision makers and policy experts and many associated it with the numerous attempts of deepening politicisation in the context of the CoFE results and the need for reconfiguring the European Public Sphere. The article aims first to problematise the EPC - focusing on the reactions it triggered, covering the period from Macron’s speech in May 2022 until the first official reunion of the EPC in Prague in October 2022 and to place it in a larger context of theoretical debates about EU politicisation in foreign policy. Next, the article plans to discuss in more details the impact of this proposal on the specific case of the Western Balkans countries and the recent failed reforms of the enlargement policy.