Far from the clichés of festive diplomatic ceremonies of the opening and closing of chapters of negotiations for the integration into the EU of countries such as Albania and Montenegro to Moldova and Ukraine, the major French daily, Le Figaro, has published this week an analysis that is both realistic and worrying about the fate of the integration of these countries.

Article i Figaro- which we are presenting in full below, tells the reason why enlargement is almost impossible and that Marta Kos knows this very well. This current impossibility is called France, due to the very specific French legislation regarding the admission of new countries to the EU. At the end of his mandate in 2007, the former French president, Jacques Chirac, left a constitutional time mine which today turns out to sabotage enlargement. The European treaties state that any new enlargement of the EU requires unanimous ratification by all EU member states.

At the moment of the integration of a new member, each EU country gives its ratification mainly with a vote from the local Parliament. However, France decided to decide differently for granting its ratification. The former French president changed the French Constitution so that the green light for the entry of a new country into the EU is not required from the French Parliament, but from all citizens of France by popular referendum. This new formula of French ratification applies to any new membership that will occur after that of Croatia. This is stated in Article 88.5 of the French Constitution modified in 2008. The only way to avoid a French referendum, this article states, is to create a qualified majority of votes, that is, 3/5, not only in the Parliament, but also in the French Senate, which is almost a utopia since such a majority is hardly achieved even for topics of France and even less for topics that affect foreign countries.

In the following article of Figaro-we are putting this part at the beginning which talks about France's reservations towards integration. The article also underlines the idea that beyond the French referendum, the EU enlargement project is also being damaged by high corruption in candidate countries, as was seen these days with Ukraine. As for the other idea that these candidate countries should initially be integrated as a "face to face", simply with the geopolitical aim of creating a united Europe facing Russia, but without being given the right of veto, Figaro reveals that this will not be realized because the idea of ​​creating an EU with second-rate member states is not accepted, moreover, this would require another step, that of changing the treaties.

But if these countries join the EU with full rights while they are not yet democratically ready, without taking into account the economic gap, the EU risks bringing into its fold a "Trojan Horse", meaning that these countries could use their veto to avoid being sanctioned. This is the great dilemma of Marta Kosi, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, the article writes. Precisely Figaro has chosen as the title of his article the comparison that Marta Kos herself has made with the "Trojan Horse" which she says she in no way wants to leave to Europe.

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Figaro

"How to prevent the Trojan Horse from entering the EU", the problem posed by enlargement!

ANALYSIS - Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, Ukraine… The European Union could soon have 30 to 35 members. But this will depend on the EU's internal reform and the guarantee that some countries, including France, will not block integration.

Most French people are against enlargement

Regarding the candidacies of Ukraine and Moldova, the European Commission says that it is up to the European Council of Heads of State and Government to find the right solutions in the face of Viktor Orbán's veto. One idea is to negotiate separate chapters, since unanimity under the treaties is only needed at the beginning and end of the integration process. Another approach to advance the integration of these two countries without falling prey to Orbán's veto is to wait for parliamentary elections in Hungary in April 2026, in the hope that the opposition will win them. But this is a strategy like that in games of chance. It should not be forgotten that there are other countries that are quietly satisfied with the Hungarian veto against Ukraine.

When Ursula von der Leyen went to Kiev at the beginning of the conflict to encourage Ukraine to join, even though she had no mandate from the member states to make this promise, her initiative was sharply criticized in several capitals. For example, despite the strong support of the French president for Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelensky during the latter's visit to Paris last Monday, Emmanuel Macron is holding back on the idea of ​​Ukraine's rapid accession to the EU. The frequent problems with corruption there are creating a stalemate. However, there is no question of Ukraine joining the EU as long as this country is at war. Even if a ceasefire and peace were to be reached with Russia, there would always be the looming risk of another Russian attack, which would draw Europeans into the conflict if Ukraine were to become a member of the EU. Therefore, caution and reservations are being expressed about the Ukrainian candidacy. Not to mention the challenges that Ukrainian membership would bring with regard to agriculture and the EU budget.

Beyond Ukraine, France, along with Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, is among the most hesitant countries regarding the very principle of enlargement, even for other candidate countries such as those in the Western Balkans. Only 35 percent of French people support EU enlargement, while the EU average is 56 percent in favor of enlargement, according to a Eurobarometer survey of March 2025. This is a major obstacle, especially since France is one of the few countries that has planned to ratify the admission of new members by referendum. Marta Kos recently met with French parliamentarians to discuss this issue of the French referendum on new memberships, which is causing great concern in Brussels.

"Inviting the French to a referendum to vote for or against the entry of, for example, Montenegro would be catastrophic for the European destiny of this country," warns Lukas Macek, a researcher at the think-tank Institute Jacques Delors"The scenario of the failure of EU enlargement due to a 'no' vote by the French in the upcoming referendums in France would pit the people against each other, which would be the opposite of what EU enlargement aims to achieve," says this researcher.

However, the public debate in France on enlargement is either being specifically avoided, or is being hijacked by Eurosceptic parties hostile to any idea of ​​enlargement, such as Le Pen's National Rally or France Invincible (Insubordinate France) of Mélenchon. The risk is great that if there is a debate in France on enlargement, it will focus on the problems that the new countries that will join the EU will cause and the costs of their integration instead of talking about the advantages that enlargement will bring to Europeans themselves. Marta Kos tries, when she takes the floor, to assure public opinion in Europe that these countries will not create problems, that the population of Montenegro is not as large as that of a medium-sized French city like Toulouse, or that the population of Albania is not larger than that of a single large Italian city, like Rome. Integrating these countries, according to Marta Kos, is not at all an economic challenge for the EU, unlike it was with the previous wave of enlargements. For his part, the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama, warns impatiently: “Leaving us at the EU’s door would be like playing with fire.”

The $100 million corruption scandal that cost two ministers close to Volodymyr Zelensky their government posts will not help Ukraine's bid to join the EU. Ursula von der Leyen, who predicted that the country "could potentially join before 2030" during a visit to Kiev in February, will now have to revise her timeline for integration. Corruption in Ukraine is a "gift from God" for Viktor Orban, who is vetoing the opening of negotiation chapters with Ukraine.

European Union enlargement, stalled for more than a decade, has once again become a priority in Brussels. On Tuesday, senior EU officials hosted representatives of candidate countries for the first forum dedicated to the topic. In mid-December, ministers from the 27 member states are scheduled to meet on the same topic in Lviv, Ukraine, and enlargement will then be on the agenda of a summit of EU heads of state and government on December 18.

The alternative seems clear: countries that do not join the European Union risk falling under Russian control. Ukraine embodies both the urgency and the pitfalls of the EU enlargement process. It is worth remembering that it was the desire of the Ukrainian people for closer ties with the EU in 2014 – and not the desire to join NATO, as the propaganda claims – that provoked Vladimir Putin’s anger. And it was Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that reignited the geopolitical need for enlargement. The last country to join the EU was Croatia, in 2013, after Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and ten Central and Eastern European countries in 2004. Now, European leaders evoke, like the president of the European Commission, the importance of the necessary “reunification” of the “European family”.

Three countries – Moldova, Montenegro and Albania – are in principle close to joining the European Union by 2030 or shortly after. Georgia withdrew its candidacy after the victory of the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party in the 2024 parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, Serbia, through President Aleksandar Vučić, maintains close ties with both the regimes in Moscow and Beijing, violating the principles of democracy. “In the fragmented geopolitical world, you are either with us in the EU or you are not with us,” summarizes the situation, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas.

We must free our continent from autocracies,” adds Marta Kos, the Commissioner for Enlargement. For her, this is an opportunity to “complete the unification of Europe for the first time in history.” Both Iceland, which withdrew its candidacy in 2015, and Norway, which gave up EU membership in a referendum in 1994, are reconsidering joining the EU. In her office at Commission headquarters, Commissioner Marta Kos has a large board that allows her to follow, in real time, the progress of the ten candidate countries, chapter by chapter, using red, yellow and green markers. Thirty-three chapters, grouped into six themes (fundamentals, external affairs, competitiveness, internal market, etc.), must be closed in order to conclude the negotiations. This Slovenian Commissioner remembers her country’s entry into the EU in 2004, which was motivated mainly by economic reasons. But today, notes Marta Kos, enlargement “is a security issue.” It is a “peace project” for a return to Europe’s roots.

On her wall chart, some countries have not moved at all, like Turkey, with which negotiations were frozen in 2018 after Erdogan's authoritarian course. Kosovo too, whose candidacy has never been accepted, given that five EU member states do not recognize it as an independent state. North Macedonia's candidacy has been pending for more than twenty years. After agreeing to change its name to unblock Greece's veto, this country has now fallen under a Bulgarian veto due to a dispute over national minorities. Moldova, although one of the first in the class to integrate into the EU, unfortunately has a candidacy linked to that of Ukraine, but which Hungary is blocking with its veto. Dorin Frasineanu, a Moldovan diplomat in Brussels, hopes for his country "to open negotiations as soon as possible in order to finalize them by the end of 2027. Russian rhetoric during our parliamentary elections in Moldova was full of the theme that the European Union lies to you and will keep its promises. Therefore, it is important to show the opposite to Moldovan citizens who voted for the pro-European camp," argues the Moldovan diplomat in Brussels.

Montenegro, the 28th European country in 2028?

In this integration race, Montenegro aims to become the 28th European state in 2028. The country has already successfully closed seven of the thirty-three chapters of the integration negotiation process. The drafting of the text of the Treaty of Accession of Montenegro to the EU will begin very soon. Albania is on the same trajectory. Since last Monday, it has opened all negotiation chapters and hopes to close them by the end of 2027. “It still seemed like a dream just a year ago,” recalls its Prime Minister, Edi Rama, who speaks of the preparations as a “love marriage.” The European Commission is also pleased with this “inspiring” prospect. But, of their 27 member states, although in principle they have given almost unanimous support, in reality they do not seem to be in a great hurry for this major expansion to happen, as their power risks merging further into a larger Union.

Therefore, the European Commission, showing great diplomatic caution, has postponed until later the very sensitive issue of EU institutional reform, a condition for enlargement to be realized. “We cannot be hypocritical, on the one hand complaining that the current European Union with 27 members does not function in an efficient, democratic way that would make us strong, and on the other hand not reforming ourselves to be able to function tomorrow with 33 or 35 member states,” denounces the centrist MEP, Sandro Gozi, author of a report adopted by the European Parliament on the subject of reforming EU institutions. “We must be honest with our citizens and with the candidate countries: either we take enlargement seriously and start these internal reforms, or we pretend that we will enlarge but in reality we are preparing for the failure of enlargement.”

But reform to amend the European treaties seems impossible because both the European Commission and the EU member states are terribly reluctant to abolish, for example, the rule of unanimous voting in the field of EU foreign policy. Such a reform, necessary before EU enlargement, also requires unanimous ratification... Or the example of reforming Article 7 of the EU Treaty, concerning sanctions against a member state that violates EU principles, as Hungary does, and this article cannot be changed without unanimity.

Based on the bad experience with Hungary, Marta Kos, who defends enlargement, also says that "I don't want to be remembered in history as the one who allowed a 'Trojan Horse' to enter that could destroy the European Union from within." Europe does not need a new Orbán in one of the candidate countries who, after joining the EU, would block everything with his veto. Therefore, the EU Treaty must be amended before enlargement, so that the right of veto no longer exists for foreign policy decisions.

In the current impossibility of reforming the Treaty, the European Commission is therefore proposing several other ways to prevent new member states from becoming “Trojan Horses”. One of these ways would be gradual and conditional integration over a transitional period. Gradual entry into the European single market, for example, is already a reality. Some candidate countries, such as Moldova and Ukraine, will be able to benefit from free roaming for mobile communications starting in 2026, will then benefit from SEPA bank transfers, and will enter the European single energy market by the end of 2027, without yet being full members of the EU.

Meanwhile, the other idea that was floated, that new members would enter the EU with limited rights (not having the right to veto, for example), is an idea that is no longer considered appropriate.

According to MEP Sandro Gozi, "it is a very bad idea to create second-class member states."

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