Contestation and Counter-Contestation of EU Enlargement in Georgia: Framing Struggles, Identity Politics, and Strategic Ambiguity

This article examines the evolving contestation and counter-contestation of European Union (EU) enlargement in Georgia, situating the country’s 2022 membership application and 2023 candidate status within domestic struggles over identity. While EU enlargement policy has historically been framed as a technocratic and merit-based process, its symbolic significance has intensified in the context of Russia’s war on Ukraine. In Georgia, this has generated heightened societal polarisation, elite fragmentation, and discursive volatility around the meaning, desirability, and implications of “joining Europe.” Drawing on discourse analysis of political speeches, party platforms, civil society campaigns, and media narratives (2020–2024), this article identifies three core frames of contestation: EU enlargement as civilisational belonging, as a threat to sovereignty, and as a geopolitical necessity. It also examines counter-contestation by pro-European actors, who reframe EU integration as a national historical mission and as the only viable security guarantee. These struggles are mediated by strategic ambiguity from both the EU and – at least until 2024 - Georgian authorities, creating room for selective appropriation of EU norms and flexible narratives that can be mobilised by opposing actors. The article contributes to debates on enlargement by showing how EU membership is simultaneously contested and reappropriated in a fragile democracy where EU legitimacy is high but consensus is eroding. The Georgian case reveals how enlargement operates not just as a governance mechanism, but as a deeply political and symbolic battleground over competing futures in Europe’s shifting periphery.