Whose Security? The EU Enlargement-Security Nexus in Armenia and Moldova

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU enlargement (especially to Ukraine and other countries in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood) has predominantly been framed as a geopolitical imperative (Anghel and Jones 2024), reflecting the EU’s attempt to position itself as a geopolitical power (Anghel 2025). Against the backdrop of an aggressive Russia, enlargement has thus emerged as a collective security tool for the European Union, one that can foster long-term security and peace in Europe (Koval and Vachudova 2024). However, still little is known about how eastern partners themselves frame their integration with the EU and whether they regard accession as a security guarantee in the new regional context. This paper makes two contributions to the analysis of the critical connections between enlargement and security. Epistemologically, it departs from the predominant EU-centric accounts of enlargement. In a reversed perspective, it analyses the extent to which candidate and potential candidate countries perceive and use security to legitimate EU integration. Empirically, it shifts the focus away from the macro-level of EU (enlargement, security) policy framework and towards the meso-level, namely how EU initiatives hit home in the partner countries. We analyze two eastern neighborhood countries whose security is threatened by an external actor but that are at different stages in the integration process: Moldova – officially recognized as a candidate country in June 2022- and Armenia – which has made the first official step towards EU accession in March 2025. We analyze how the political elites in both countries legitimate EU accession in relation to external security threats, paying particular attention to the EU’s security initiatives (in particular the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) missions deployed in 2022-2023 in Armenia (EUMA) and Moldova (EUPM), as well as EU military assistance provided to both countries as part of the European Peace Facility (EPF). Our paper is based on the analysis of key EU documents and semi structured interviews conducted with local officials, EU delegations and EU missions in Armenia in April 2024 and in Moldova in February 2025. Our analysis reveals how EU integration was framed as a necessary step towards increasing the countries’ security, showing how the integration-security nexus develops in both countries as a consequence of external security threats. Whereas in Moldova recent security integration with the EU (notably, through the 2024 Defense and Security Partnership) marks a departure from the country’s neutral status and embeds security in a decade-long association /accession process, in Armenia it is the country’s security rapprochement with the EU (even if fragile and limited) that has paved the way for a new accession outlook.