Strategic Autonomy, Security, and EU Enlargement: Parliamentary Discourses in an Era of Geopolitical Change

The volatile geopolitical environment provoked by the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and the expanding competition of global powers has fundamentally reshaped Europe’s geopolitical landscape and elevated EU enlargement to the forefront of European political discussions. The EU enlargement policy – traditionally a merit-based political process grounded in conditionality – is now increasingly shaped by security concerns. While EU enlargement has long been viewed as a successful foreign policy instrument stabilising the EU’s neighbourhood, the potential implications of the New Eastern Enlargement for the EU’s security have gained immediate importance. As it has become increasingly prevalent in political discourse to portray enlargement as a tool to enhance the EU’s security and economic capacity, it may be seen as a means of strengthening the EU’s strategic autonomy. In the context of heightened geopolitical uncertainty, the concept of strategic autonomy has also increased its prominence in European political discourse. While strategic autonomy has been extensively debated across different arenas and levels of EU policymaking, its role in, and relation to, EU enlargement debates remain underexplored. This article explores the role security considerations play in enlargement debates, examining whether and how enlargement and its potential impact are framed in security terms, particularly within the justifications used by political actors to support or oppose enlargement. A particular focus is placed on how, and whether, strategic autonomy is invoked in political discourses on EU enlargement, and on whether strategic autonomy is predominantly framed in security terms. Methodologically, the study employs a qualitative discourse analysis of parliamentary debates, allowing for the identification of recurring frames, justifications, and patterns of contestation. The article analyses parliamentary debates in the European Parliament and the Polish Sejm as a selected EU Member State national parliament. This enables a comparison of enlargement-related parliamentary discourses across multiple levels of EU governance – supranational and national. From a constructivist perspective, parliamentary debates are treated as arenas in which competing interpretations of enlargement, security, and strategic autonomy are articulated and contested. By focusing on parliaments as key sites of political deliberation and discursive contestation, the study contributes to understanding how enlargement is situated within broader debates on the EU’s security and geopolitical positioning. Poland represents a particularly relevant case given its geographical proximity to new candidate countries, its strategic role in the European security architecture, and its traditionally Atlanticist orientation. The findings offer insights into how the evolving relationship between EU enlargement, security, and strategic autonomy is articulated across different levels of EU governance. More broadly, the article contributes to debates on the geopoliticisation of EU enlargement and on how European integration is shaped by and evolves during crises.