Written by Rebecca Torpey.
In May 2024, former European Parliament President Pat Cox described enlargement as perhaps the ‘EU’s most powerful, transformative and successful policy tool over the past five decades’. The European Council (EU heads of state or government) has, from the outset, played a central role in the EU’s enlargement process, shaping both formal and informal aspects. The Lisbon Treaty formally tasked the institution with defining the eligibility conditions to be applied to the accession process.
Each enlargement round has provided the Member States and EU institutions with the opportunity to reflect on the conditions of entry and on the impact on the functioning of the EU institutions. This has resulted in the more refined enlargement policy we have today, with the Copenhagen criteria set by the European Council in 1993 as core principles and, on that basis, a fine-tuned methodology for negotiations, adopted in 2020. This briefing will consider some of the challenges facing EU enlargement, look at the European Council’s current role in the process and demonstrate the historical evolution of the European Council’s involvement in enlargement.
Read the complete briefing on ‘The European Council and enlargement‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
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