The magnificent ten: A coalition of the willing to drive the EU’s next enlargement

European Council on Foreign Relations

The European Union faces growing geopolitical pressure to integrate Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans as part of an eventual peace settlement in Kyiv. To drive this process, a proposed "Team Enlargement" coalition of ten key member states, led by Germany, aims to establish a new accession framework over the next 18 months.

This initiative responds to decades of institutional stagnation and rising public scepticism across the bloc, which have been compounded by the rise of far-right parties and American transactionalism. In May 2026, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sent a letter proposing an associate membership model to grant Ukraine non-voting representation in EU institutions, building on joint proposals with France to simplify accession. While the European Commission's "reverse enlargement" model was rejected, member states remain open to enhanced gradual integration. However, policymakers must navigate domestic fears regarding migration, fiscal burdens, and rule of law erosion, which populist narratives exploit to frame enlargement as an economic liability.

Comment

The revival of bilateral initiatives through the Franco-German Ministerial Council exposes deep-seated structural divisions within the European Union regarding the integration of candidate states. By championing Friedrich Merz's associate membership proposal, Berlin and Paris are attempting to bypass the traditional consensus-driven accession framework to manage immediate geopolitical pressures from the Ukrainian conflict. This shift towards a multi-tiered European architecture threatens to marginalise smaller, security-maximalist member states like Poland and Lithuania that view partial integration as an inadequate deterrent against Russian revisionism. Consequently, the creation of a core 'Team Enlargement' coalition risks institutionalising a fragmented decision-making process that weakens the bloc's collective bargaining leverage.