April 30, 2025
A U.S. Strategy for Advancing EU Enlargement
In 2014, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker famously declared a pause in the European Union’s enlargement. This pause is now over, after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine spurred the bloc to fill geopolitical vacuums along its periphery. Abandoning former strategic ambiguity toward its Eastern neighborhood, the European Union has opened accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and granted candidacy to Georgia. EU enlargement’s new momentum has spilled over into the Western Balkans, where Bosnia-Herzegovina has likewise received the green light for negotiations and North Macedonia and Albania have formally begun them.
As President Donald Trump’s second term kicks off, his administration has yet to lay out a clear position on the issue of EU enlargement.
There are currently ten officially recognized or potential candidates for EU membership (adding Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, and Türkiye to the above six). While their current progress toward joining the bloc ranges widely, all have nonetheless received an explicit promise of membership from the European Union. Yet daunting obstacles to enlargement remain. Both the European Union and accession countries must make difficult reforms. Unresolved conflicts in accession countries—most crucially the war in Ukraine—continue to block their EU paths, and these countries’ persistent economic and security vulnerabilities make progress along this path fragile.
Read the full article from The Washington Quarterly.
More from CNAS
-
Domestic Russia: Security Services, the Economy, and Elections
Podcast
Today we are turning to domestic Russian politics, with Russia’s State Duma elections coming up September 18th through the 20th. The elections are taking place in a more uncer...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend
-
What America’s Adversaries and Allies Hope to Gain at the U.N. General Assembly
Commentary
This article was originally published in War on the Rocks. This year’s U.N. General Assembly officially opened on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The annual gathering gives diplomats and le...
By Nicholas Lokker
-
A Report Card for Europe’s Defense Industry
Podcast
As the war in Ukraine rages on, Ukraine has struggled this summer with a munitions shortage. With U.S. supplies strained by the war with Iran, European governments are having ...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor & Jim Townsend
-
Sep 04, ’26 Washington Roundtable
Podcast
Jim Townsend, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, joins the Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast to discuss the latest on the Iran War, Russi...
By Jim Townsend
