Keeping the European Momentum: A Pan-European Study on EU Enlargement and Deepening

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The European Union is at a crossroads, both in terms of its internal constitutional reform and the integration of new member states. Hence, deepening and enlargement are inseparably linked together. Finding solutions to both challenges will be the major task of the new legislative term of the European Parliament and Commission from 2024 to 2029. As the official think tank of the European People’s Party (EPP), the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies develops policy options for European decisionmakers and opinion leaders from a centre-right perspective. Having been the driving force behind past European integration and enlargement processes since the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957, the political family of the EPP feels a distinct obligation to shape the decisive next steps and lay a successful path ahead for a next-generation European Union.

While the last major round of new EU memberships in 2004 happened under comparatively stable regional and geopolitical circumstances, the current situation couldn’t be worse. Russia’s war against Ukraine, the Middle East again on the brink of a regional conflict, and an assertively rising China are only three major destabilising and adverse developments working against the core ideas of Europe as an anchor of peace, stability, and well-being.

Enlarging the European Union to gain more weight as a geopolitical actor and stabilise the endangered periphery by integrating neighbouring nations into the framework of the European Union is often mentioned as an argument in favour of opening “the club” to new members. At the same time, the rise of Eurosceptic parties shows a growing discontent with the Union’s current functioning and is blurring the prospect of an accelerated and successful enlargement process.

In the context of the European Election 2024 and the constitution of a New European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen, the Martens Centre commissioned Leuven-based Ipsos to conduct a data-driven survey across all EU-27 member states. To better understand EU citizens’ attitudes and their views towards the enlargement and deepening of the European Union, the research project looked more closely at the following dimensions:

• What are the conceptions of “Europe” across different socio-demographic groups and countries?
• How do citizens of the EU member states resonate with the perspective of a larger and deeper Union, mainly when talking about the potential accession of Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, and the Western Balkan countries?
• What are the attitudes of different socio-political groups towards various models of integrating those candidate members in the EU?
• What has to be changed within the European treaties to make any further enlargement and deepening into a success story, and not a failure for the Union?

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