Contrary to the current European Union reform debate, it is possible to have the enlargement process and deeper EU integration run parallel, former European Commission president José Manuel Barroso told Euractiv.

“A very important lesson learned from then is that it’s possible to enlarge and deepen [the EU] at the same time,” Barroso said. “There were always those who said, more enlargement means less deepening – this is completely false.”

Under Barroso’s two Commissions, the EU first increased from 15 to 25 members when ten countries—Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia—joined in 2004. Bulgaria and Romania followed in 2008, and Croatia in 2013.

“It was a historic, unprecedented success of the EU, showing also the transformative capacity of the bloc,” Barroso said, adding Europe “should not lose the perspective of what happened back then”.

Over the years, Barroso said the EU has made more progress in deeper integration, especially with debt mutualisation under the NextGenerationEU fund and a higher level of convergence between 27 member states in UN votes than at 12 members.

When asked about lessons learned from two decades of enlargement, Barroso said they would be “to avoid grey zones of instability” in the EU’s neighbourhood and “not to lose the standards” of the EU.

Despite issues with the rule of law in some of the newer EU member states, Barroso said, “They are now much better off than before joining the European Union, namely when they were under Communist rule.

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Next accession round

“I thought it was a huge mistake when, after my second Commission term in 2014, it was said there would be no more enlargement in the next five years,” Barroso said.

“It was creating disappointment, frustration and even resentment – and it was ignoring the sensitivity of those countries and those people,” he said.

Asked about European Council President Charles Michel’s 2030 target, Barroso does not favour definitive dates as it “could create disappointment”.

“But it’s especially important now, namely because of Ukraine, how to deal with time – because the reality is that it’s not realistic to have a country in the EU that is in a state of war,” Barroso said.

Barroso echoed calls from the current European Commission and some EU member states for the gradual integration of candidate countries by letting them participate in some of the bloc’s meetings, programmes and institutional structures.

“Precisely because it’s going to be difficult and probably long, we need to start earlier [to integrate them] as we’ve done before,” he added.

Treaty reform?

In Brussels, the question of when the bloc is ready for new members goes hand in hand with how it will function when it expands from 27 to potentially over 30 members.

Asked whether the bloc’s treaties can handle 36 members or if it would require another treaty change, Barroso said it would be “a huge mistake if now Europeans would start a fundamental revision of the [EU] institutions because of the enlargement.”

“I’m not saying this to defend the Lisbon Treaty, which I negotiated, but because it requires unanimity to change a treaty, and if we start introducing other issues [like enlargement] in the process, the pretexts for opposing it are going to increase,” Barroso said.

“There will be people who want to block enlargement, so they will use institutional arguments, and there will be people who want to block institutional reform, so they will use enlargement—we should not mix the problems,” he added.

Instead, the bloc should “avoid too ambitious reforms” and “only make those strictly necessary for enlargement.”

“I was president of a Commission with 28 members and all studies, all opinions, showed that our Commission was taking decisions more effectively and quicker than the previous smaller Commissions,” Barroso said.

Covering the cost

Asked about the current debate on the potential cost of enlargement as an argument against it, Barroso said, “The alternative will certainly cost more than to invest in enlargement.”

“Are we ready to pay for the instability of tomorrow, encouraged by the possible success of Russia in Ukraine? Does it cost less?”

“The issue of costs has to be seen strategically and not just in the short-term accounting manner,” Barroso said, adding: “Our conclusion [in 2004] was the advantages, not only political but also in economic terms, were higher than the costs.”

He also called for reform of the EU’s system of own resources. Instead of the current net payers and receivers system, the EU could “have some own resources linked, for instance, to the VAT or member states paying according to benefits [they have] from the internal market.”

According to him, the EU should “really invest in the enlargement from all points of view.”

“Sometimes it’s not just about money – it’s about attention, it’s about being present [in those countries], and it’s about giving advice – and that requires something bigger and larger than what we have seen so far,” Barroso said.

“It cannot only be done by the DG and the respective Commissioner, with all due respect. It needs to involve the [European] societies as a whole.”

In a reference to the current pro-EU protest in Georgia, where demonstrators rally against a “foreign influence” bill which could jeopardise the country’s path into the bloc, Barroso said:

“We see people waving EU flags, [like they have done on the Maidan when I was in Ukraine]. What do we want more? How many people in current EU member states would do this at the moment?”

“This is why we need to deal with these aspirations in a way that is not just political or administrative and technical,” he added.