EU institutional leaders toward the 2030 Enlargement Agenda: Case of Ukraine

This contribution aims at exploring the leadership performance of EU institutional leadership, i.e. presidents of the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council on the reform of the EU enlargement policy in response to new situational settings caused by Russia’s full-scale military aggression against Ukraine. Particular focus of the paper research is put on the evolution of the EU stance on Ukraine’s accession in context of the announced plans to strengthen the values-driven transformational potential of European Union on the international arena (Ch. Michel, U. von der Leyen, R. Metsola, 2022) and the adoption of the ambitious 2030 Enlargement agenda.   Meantime, the dynamic nature of political processes in member states and complex nature of potential accession of new EU members pose a question on the sustainability of the achieved consensus on enlargement and its timely implementation. Methodologically, due to active rhetorical engagement of the EU institutional leaders into supporting Ukraine’s accession, the paper employs strategic choice approach to study their political strategies and actions aimed at facilitating the continuous intergovernmental support for the Ukraine’s EU membership in years 2022-2024. Empirically, three sets of data are taken into consideration - political speeches delivered by EU institutions’ presidents, major strategies and regulation on the enlargement reform communicated by the above mentioned institutions and author’s interviews with foreign policy advisors to political groups in European Parliament and Ukrainian officials engaged into negotiation process with the EU. By doing so, the paper makes an attempt to explain the leverage of analysed political leaders and their inter-institutional alliance on building intergovernmental support for the transformation of EU enlargement policy in line with ‚special responsibility for Ukraine’ initiative. That, in turn, will make it possible to evaluate the efficiency of the employed going public strategy in setting the foreign policy agenda under existing institutional settings in which member states remain key decision-makers on the matter.