Enlargement Ad Infinitum? Counter‑Contestation and the Politics of Ambiguity in EU Member State Narratives on Differentiated Integration

This article examines how three key European Union (EU) member states, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Germany, deploy strategic narratives on differentiated integration that position candidate states a spectrum of political statuses: marginality (exclusionary control), hybridity (negotiated influence), centrality (shared sovereignty), and managed ambiguity (conditional leverage). We show that these narrative positions reflect different power relations, normative claims, and projected end goals for enlargement, ranging from guarded gatekeeping to transformative experimentation, from completion of European unity to open‑ended, flexible engagement with no fixed membership horizon. Using a comparative discourse analysis of government statements (2014–2024), the study examines member states' strategic narratives on differentiated integration. The findings highlight that Sweden draws primarily on hybridity and centrality narratives to sustain enlargement momentum, the Netherlands leans towards marginality and managed ambiguity to legitimise delay and differentiation, while Germany blends centrality with managed ambiguity to act as both geopolitical advocate and cautious gatekeeper. The analysis shows that contestation over enlargement increasingly takes the form of counter‑contestation through the notion of differentiated integration: by redefining what enlargement means, how it should be sequenced, and whether it necessarily culminates in full membership, core member states reframe the process into a flexible policy category that sustains protracted and ambiguous statuses, rather than rejecting enlargement outright.