EU Enlargement and Identity Through Relational Lenses: The Case of EU-Ukraine Relations

This paper examines how the enlargement process affects the identities (self-understanding) of both the EU and candidate countries. It aims to apply relational theorising to rethink the role of identity in the EU enlargement process. Existing research on EU enlargement and identity largely treats identity as a factor explaining policy outcomes - how it shapes enlargement decisions, construction of ‘Europeanness,’ and compliance with EU norms (Sjursen, 2006; Schimmelfennig, 2003; Sedelmeier, 2005; Risse, 2010; Subotić, 2011; Nancheva, 2015). Instead, this article offers a new perspective on the identity aspect and alters the view of EU enlargement as a top-down process. It shows that identity discourses of the EU and candidate states are constantly re-narrated in relation to each other and emphasises that the candidate states have their agency in boundary-drawing when it comes to EU enlargement and may force the EU to rethink its self-identification regarding its neighbours. Empirically, the paper focuses on the EU-Ukraine enlargement process and covers the period from Ukraine’s application for EU membership in 2022 until the end of the screening process in 2025. In an effort to elaborate on how identities are mutually constructed, I discuss the transformation of EU narratives towards Ukraine from exclusive to inclusive, ultimately leading to the commencement of accession talks. This article asks to what extent the discourses of EU institutions were re-narrated in relation to the discourses promoted by Ukraine. Simultaneously, this paper explores how ‘Europe’ has been redefined within Ukraine’s national identity narratives over time. This article speaks to the emerging scope of literature that aims to rethink the EU foreign policy through relational lenses, suggesting that “the EU’s external interactions unfold not through unilateral projection, but through the co-creation of goals, practices, and identities with third countries” (Anghel, 2025: 10). Such a perspective helps to move away from the paradigm that conceptualizes the EU as a state or an international organization and instead asks what kind of geopolitical actor the EU appears to be in relations with third states. These studies, however, pay less attention to the identity dimension per se. I argue that focusing on identity helps reveal how the EU, as a geopolitical actor, is co-created through its interactions with aspiring states. Methodologically, I apply an intertextual discourse analysis to examine how discourses of EU institutions and Ukraine’s political and intellectual elites relate to one another. I use a frame analysis to uncover how different events and aspects of EU-Ukraine relations are interpreted by different actors. In this way, I will aim to uncover how the identity discourses are expressed in which context and in relation to whom. It will help to reveal how both the EU and Ukraine co-create their identities and thus the enlargement discourse. The analysis will be limited to the discourses of the EU institutions (speeches and enlargement reports) and that of Ukraine’s political and intellectual elites.