The Conceptualisation of Informal Dimensions of the EU Enlargement in an Era of Great Power Competition

The EU enlargement has been considered one of the most successful instruments to foster peace and security on the European continent. Following the seven rounds, however, in the last decade the appetite to enlarge sharply decreased. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a watershed moment reinvigorating the process since 2022. Moscow’s aggression, Beijing’s geostrategic ambitions and the geopolitical winds blowing from Washington are challenges pushing the EU to strengthen its global posture. This great power competition, among others, is reflected in the re-emergence of enlargement discussions. As both a geopolitical necessity and a merit-based process, the EU enlargement has attracted considerable attention from policymakers and academics. However, the existing scholarship has largely overlooked the informal aspects of the EU decision-making process in the context of enlargement. While most debates focus on the EU’s internal reform, conditionality, economic or security rationale, the role of informal groupings and discussions that drive the process has been understudied. This paper tries to conceptualize enlargement within the wide spectrum of informal governance and argues in favour of including informality in the study of EU enlargement. Apart from attempting to explain how informality can be studied within enlargement domain, the study also showcases why the issue deserves particular attention both from scholars and policy makers, first and foremost by linking the case to intrinsic nature of the EU decision-making and the Union’s quest to become a global actor in light of great power competition. The paper, particularly, aims at serving as a precursor for explaining the political dynamics within the EU capitals and Brussels behind the accession process of the candidates. Being a pioneer in this direction, the study specifically proposes how to theorize informal discourses in the enlargement domain. Apart from that, the paper proposes threefold explanatory model, examining how actors (leaders and policy-makers), networks (informal groupings) and discourses (public and closed-door narratives) shape the policymaking at the EU level vis-à-vis enlargement. While the paper is theoretical in nature incorporating key trends and findings in enlargement and informality literature, it also uses empirical examples. The study represents a novelty in the emerging scholarship on the EU enlargement by bridging it to the equally relevant literature on informality in EU foreign policy. Consequently, the paper establishes a theoretical and conceptual framework for studying informal dimensions of the EU enlargement, bringing an added value to the enlargement and informality scholarship. Concurrently, the paper contributes to the policy-making domain by systematizing enlargement-related discussions and informing policy-oriented discussions for the practitioners in the EU, its Member States and candidate countries to observe and make use of the trends often not clearly visible in open discourse.