Contestation and Counter-Contestation of EU Enlargement: Actors, Networks and Geopolitics

This article introduces the Special Issue, which examines how the European Union’s enlargement policy has become a central arena of contestation and counter-contestation amid a fragmented European security order and intensifying geopolitical competition. In line with an emerging relational perspective on enlargement, the Special Issue foregrounds the political and relational dynamics that shape this evolving policy field. Its contributions explore how a wide spectrum of actors—from EU institutions and member states to candidate countries and external powers—individually and through transnational networks contest, reinterpret, or alternatively seek to re-legitimize enlargement. By engaging with normative, procedural, geopolitical, and Eurosceptic forms of contestation, as well as the various modes of counter-contestation that respond to these challenges, the Special Issue illuminates the key tensions structuring the EU’s revived enlargement agenda. In this introductory article, the Guest Editors outline the guiding questions and conceptual anchors of the Special Issue and situate its contributions within broader research on contestation and contemporary debates on enlargement. Empirically, the contributions focus primarily on the ‘Eastern Trio’—Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia—granted candidate status as part of the EU’s ‘geopolitical awakening’ following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Comparative insights from the Western Balkans, where entrenched patterns of contestation and stalled accession persist, provide an essential reference point for interpreting current developments. Special emphasis is placed on the growing influence of diverse actors amid the heightened geopoliticization of enlargement, the underexplored dynamics of actor networks involved in contestation, and the emerging phenomenon of counter-contestation. Together, these perspectives offer a nuanced, actor-centered account of the forces reshaping EU enlargement today.