The potential ramifications of Brexit on the European Union's enlargement process

Abstract

Since its inception as the European Coal and Steel Community, following the aftermath of the Second Word War, the European Union has grown from its 6 original members to a global economic and trading power made up of 28 Member States. This expansion occured through a process known as ‘enlargement’. Enlargement, as the term suggests, refers to the process by which the European Union enlarges through the addition of new member states. Fast-forward to the 21st century, precisely to June 2016, when the United Kingdom, one of the countries which featured in the first ever enlargement in 1973, held a referendum on whether the country should leave or remain in the European Union. The ‘leave’ vote won the referendum with 51.9% of the votes against the 48.1% of the ‘remain’ vote. This meant that the United Kingdom was to be the first country to trigger Article 50, introduced few years prior with the Lisbon Treaty, which enables a Member State to officially withdraw from the Union. Given that this was an unprecedented episode, the effects and impacts on both the UK and the EU were unknown. One of the salient questions raised by the UK’s exit, popularly referred to as ‘Brexit’, is whether this might have attracted or discouraged other European countries from joining the EU. Similarly, one must also take into consideration the effects that Brexit had (or might have) on current member states with the rise of far-right parties all around Europe, bearing in mind that rising nationalism often leads to rising levels of Euroscepticism. Therefore, in this dissertation, I will try to identify what are, or what could be, the effects of Brexit on the EU and particularly its enlargement. Through the literature on the subject, it is immediately apparent that EU enlargement has lost one of its main proponents. Considering the current bids for enlargement from a few countries, particularly that of Turkey and those of the countries in the Western Balkans, I will assess to what extent have enlargement hopes for acceding countries been affected with the UK’s departure. Ultimately, when everything is taken into consideration, one can notice that in the past few years, enlargement in the European Union has lost its momentum drastically, especially when compared to the enlargement efforts in the 1990s and 2000s. However, rather than causing this halt in enlargement momentum, Brexit was only another contributor, along with enlargement fatigue and the increasing Islamophobia around Europe. Conversely, some academics believe that the UK’s difficulties outside the EU following its withdrawal from the Union, may have given Eurosceptic member states as well as candidate states a renewed hope and belief in the European project. Moreover, we will see how since losing its position as the number one driver for enlargement, Germany has now taken over this role. This also meant that the UK has effectively forfeited all its possibilities to have a say in the enlargement debate within the European Union.