Rhetorical Entrapment and EU Enlargement after the war in Ukraine: Liberal Identity, Moral Obligation and the Western Balkans

Drawing on the Western Balkans (WB) and the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), this contribution examines the extent to which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has mobilised the EU’s liberal identity, activating narratives of solidarity, European belonging and moral responsibility, to produce the process of rhetorical entrapment (Schimmelfennig, 2001). In line with Anghel & Džankić (2023), Bosse (2022) and Dopchie & Lika (2024), the contribution argues that this conjuncture has transformed the EU’s identity from a predominantly technocratic and normative union centred on conditionality, into a community of belonging with moral obligations towards European civilians under attack. However, while the EU’s stance has politicised and accelerated its rhetoric on enlargement, it has also reduced the priority of a structured and credible accession pathway. Consequently, enlargement now serves as a geopolitical instrument of stabilisation and risk management (Anghel & Džankić, 2023), reminiscent of the EU position during the WB wars of the 1990s. This contribution analyses this shift and its consequences for the WB, namely the extent to which it reinforces the logic of crisis management at the expense of democratic transformation, thus undermining the credibility and conditionality of the External Incentives Model (Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier 2020) and opening space for illiberal influence of external actors, such as Russia. Focusing on the particularly salient case of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the study examines the EU policy between 2022 and 2026 in the wider context of the Union’s enlargement policy, underpinned by the framing analysis of EU official instruments, documents and central discourses (Council Conclusions, President of the European Commission statements, selected joint press conferences and policy documents such as the Growth Plan for the WB). At a time when the next steps in the WB process will be crucial for the future of the EU’s enlargement policy, the study seeks to understand how the Union manages its narrative and practice as a geopolitical actor so as not to undermine the credibility of enlargement as a predictable and merit-based process.