‘Gradual Integration’ in the EU: New Idea or Same Old Promise?
But Also - Vladimir Putin, Pete Hegseth, and Saudi Arabia
Hello! Today is June 22, 2026, and here is your EU news summary for the week. Feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues, and follow us on LinkedIn.
This week’s expert: Lukáš Macek is head of the Greater Europe Centre at the Jacques Delors Institute, which is dedicated to analysing EU enlargement. He is also director of Sciences Po’s European campus in Dijon.
THE BRIEFING | Lukáš Macek
‘Gradual Integration’ in the EU: New Idea or Same Old Promise?
EU enlargement has gained new momentum since 2022, but efforts to make the process more gradual have struggled to translate into strong political decisions.
Progress to date (such as the Growth Plan for the Western Balkans) lacks visibility, largely because it is missing both a strong symbolic dimension and an institutional embodiment.
Ahead of the EU-Western Balkans summit on 5 June and the EU-Moldova summit on 22 June, Chancellor Merz published a letter on enlargement. France and Germany subsequently circulated a non-paper titled “A new momentum for enlargement.”
These texts are not isolated cases: another non-paper drafted by Germany, the Benelux countries and France, as well as the declaration from the “Friends of the Western Balkans”, point to a flurry of activity extending well beyond the Franco-German tandem.
An Old Debate
The idea of integrating candidate countries more progressively first emerged in the 1990s. But a monolithic vision of EU membership has prevailed until now: a country joins everything, all at once, once it is ready for (almost) everything.
Yet does a candidate country really need to have absorbed the entire “acquis Communautaire” and be economically ready before it can take part, for instance, in the Common Foreign and Security Policy?
The risk is well known: gradual integration can lead to a “second-tier” status that ends up pushing genuine accession into the indefinite future. Hence the understandable wariness of candidate countries, and the need to convince them that the goal is to speed up accession, not slow it down.
It was precisely this kind of ambiguity that contributed to the failure of the “European Confederation” project in 1991.
Changing Landscape
Chancellor Merz’s letter and the Franco-German non-paper constitute the first ambitious initiative at the highest political level.
Friedrich Merz proposes offering Ukraine membership as an “associate member”, while also suggesting that innovative solutions be sought for the other candidates and that their accession be accelerated too.
The non-paper puts forward the idea of a toolbox for “more structured gradual integration”. Both texts sketch out some participation by candidate countries in EU institutions, without voting rights.
They also aim to make clear that the goal is genuinely to facilitate accession. Chancellor Merz thus speaks of “a huge step forward, bringing [Ukraine] immediately closer to full membership” and of “a status substantially equivalent to that of a member state, going far beyond what we could offer in the medium term through our accession process.”
The non-paper reaffirms the goal of “full membership” and the “intention is neither to replace full EU membership nor to prolong the path”
Realistically acknowledging the political difficulty of future ratifications — particularly in France — Friedrich Merz advocates a pragmatic approach that “would require neither ratification of the accession treaty under Article 49 TEU, nor any treaty change, but simply a solid political agreement.” This marks a major difference from the recent idea of “reverse accession” floated by the Commission.
A Few Regrets
The lack of any clear link between Merz’s letter and the Franco-German non-paper raises doubts about how much Berlin and Paris agree. It also raises a deeper question: why does the non-paper ignore the idea of an “associate member state” promoted by the German chancellor?
If this reflects a deliberate choice to favour Ukraine, the frustration of the “older” candidates risks deepening. If the new status is attractive, why not offer it to countries whose accession prospects are admittedly closer, though not imminent? Conversely, if the offer is not relevant for those hoping to join around 2030, why would it convince Ukraine?
Moreover, the boldness of both documents remains relative. Friedrich Merz is more disruptive, but he stays vague on institutional participation—both for Ukraine’s “associate member” status and for the Western Balkans’ “observer status”.
When he mentions “full alignment with the CFSP,” he does not specify whether the counterpart would be full participation (without voting rights) in its implementation. Forthcoming clarifications will be decisive for candidate countries.
The non-paper would reinforce the gradual nature of the process, but its effects risk remaining barely perceptible to citizens, given how cautious it remains on institutional participation — limited to “specific items on the agenda.”
Both texts also sidestep essential issues: eligibility, reversibility in the event of democratic backsliding, and safeguards against bilateral blockages.
Words to Action
One might have expected this new enlargement momentum to be embodied by an ambitious proposal from the European Commission, along the lines of “Agenda 2000” from 1997.
Instead, the initiative today seems to be coming more from Member States, which is in itself neither new nor a problem—provided Germany and France once again demonstrate their ability to bring other Member States along. Public opinion in those countries appears notably more favourable to enlargement and may therefore share the candidates’ initial wariness.
But regardless of where the initiative comes from, what matters is the pace. A gradual approach is only useful if it gets going quickly and builds momentum.
Yet since the European Council of June 2022, which already raised the idea of gradual integration, much time has been lost. It is now time to move from debate to action. Recent initiatives offer the opportunity to do so.
What Should We Make of it
This is also why the current debate should not be reduced to a familiar but misleading binary between regulation and innovation. Poor regulation can hinder innovation, but well-designed rules can also shape and direct it.
In this case, the EU Space Act would help fill important gaps in international space law, steer innovation towards more sustainable practices, and create the conditions for the emergence of European champions.
At the same time, Brussels is facing growing pressure to scale back its regulatory ambitions. Companies such as Starlink, supported by the US administration, are pushing back against European efforts to establish meaningful oversight of space services operating within the EU market.
This resistance echoes the pushback seen in other areas of EU digital and tech regulation, where legislation such as the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act have all faced intense lobbying from major US technology firms.
Negotiations on the proposal are likely to be lengthy. But Europe is running out of time. Delaying decisions or lowering the level of ambition would only deepen Europe’s strategic dependence in a domain that is becoming increasingly critical for its security and sovereignty.
In Case You Missed It
EU-PUTIN TALKS • During the European Council meeting of 18-19 June in Brussels, leaders clashed over European Council President Costa’s outreach to the Kremlin, with Macron and Merz scorning the move.
Estonia’s Kristen Michal went furthest, warning mediator status would constrain EU pressure on Moscow. Belgium’s De Wever backed Costa publicly instead. Costa insists he isn’t acting as mediator, only opening a channel.
The clash lands amid a separate French driven push to overhaul the EU’s foreign policy arm (the EEAS) and curtail its leader Kaja Kallas’s mandate.
TRANSATLANTIC FRICTIONS • Pete Hegseth has launched a six month review of US military presence in Europe, days after withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany and scrapping a planned fire battalion deployment there.
The defence secretary scolded NATO allies in Brussels for refusing base access during the Iran strikes, tying future US dues to allied spending levels ahead of next month’s Ankara summit.
Separately, SpaceX has criticized an EU plan to reserve part of the 2GHz satellite spectrum band for European operators, warning it could degrade Starlink connectivity in Ukraine.
The European Commission frames the move as sovereignty policy, after Washington’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) already threatened retaliation over the plan.
PIF • Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has warned, per the FT, that EU regulation is “really hurting” Gulf investors, citing Aramco and Sabic alongside its own holdings.
Governor Yasir al-Rumayyan singled out the bloc’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), in force since 2023, which lets Brussels investigate and potentially block firms receiving subsidies outside the EU from mergers, procurement and market access.
In practice, the FSR’s highest profile enforcement actions have disproportionately targeted Middle Eastern buyers, including an in depth probe into Abu Dhabi’s acquisition of German chemical group Covestro, ultimately approved.
Brussels dismisses the complaints as lobbying, noting Gulf investment hasn’t slowed. PIF still pledged over €10.4bn by 2030, but the friction is real.
What We’ve Been Reading
In Europe 2031, an essay on Europe’s place in the AI age, Daan Juijn, Stan van Baarsen, Judith Dada, Lily Stelling, Philip Fox, Alex Petropoulos and Michiel Bakker ring the alarm bell: Europe risks becoming a bystander unless it urgently builds the capacity needed to defend its agency.
In an interview published by Project Syndicate, Philippe Aghion tells Simon Johnson that Europe’s economic malaise stems less from an acute crisis than from a failure to move from catch-up growth to frontier innovation, leaving it too dependent on incremental progress while the United States and China race ahead in AI and other breakthrough technologies.
quite astonishing how much the EU has improved and changed over the last 10 years. the old united states of Europe idea is gone.
in England, the 10th anniversary of brexit is mostly talking about the EU ten years ago, not today.