After over 16 hours of negotiations, the European Council announced a compromise on December 19 to fund a €90 billion interest-free loan to allow war-torn Ukraine to survive. Rather than adopt a controversial plan to use Russian frozen assets held mostly in Belgium, the two-year loan—which Ukraine won’t have to pay back unless Moscow makes reparations—is backed by guarantees from the European Union budget.
In the days leading up to the announcement, EU officials insisted that this option wasn't available because it required unanimity; Hungary and Slovakia were against it. However, with the frozen asset plan sputtering under Belgian opposition and Ukraine facing collapse if it didn't get the money, EU officials found another legal mechanism to borrow the money. The solution epitomized Jean Monnet's famous dictum that “Europe will be forged in crisis, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.”
While President Vladimir Putin celebrated the fact that Russia’s frozen assets would not be used for now, the plan contained two innovations that bode well for a stronger and larger European Union. First, for the only time since the COVID-19 pandemic, EU leaders agreed to collectively borrow. Germany and France had portrayed the post-pandemic borrowing as a one-off to deal with the economic fallout from a once-in-a-century health crisis. Now, the EU has a green light to collectively borrow for things like defense spending.
Second, while Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic will not guarantee the Ukraine loan, they were sidelined. These “small” countries have held disproportionate leverage because of EU rules often requiring unanimity; here, they were bypassed with a qualified majority. One of the chief arguments against a larger EU is that a new member could fall under Moscow’s sway and wield disproportionate strength; now, the EU has a way to deal with its revisionist members.
Two-Thirds Majorities
Since the loan was adopted just before the holidays, there hasn’t yet been any polling on it, but broadly speaking, Europeans support a stronger EU. According to the latest Eurobarometer survey released in November, more than two-thirds of Europeans support a common EU foreign policy, defense and security policy, strategy to improve competitiveness, migration policy, climate policy, trade policy, and energy policy.
Support for a common security and defense policy and strategy to improve competitiveness are highest at 79 percent, perhaps a recognition of the threats posed by a resurgent Russia and the fact that the United States now views the continent as an adversary to slap tariffs on.
A special Eurobarometer released in March also registered majority support for breaking the EU’s dry spell on enlargement, which last added a member with Croatia in 2013. (And the United Kingdom left the bloc in 2020.) The survey found that 56 percent of EU citizens want further enlargement; it also found that 56 percent believe that their own country would benefit from future enlargement.
However, there lies a noticeable split between what former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Old Europe and New Europe. Only 43 percent of French, 49 percent of Germans, and 53 percent of Italians are in favor, while many of the most enthusiastic countries—where support hovers in the 70s—are members who joined after the Cold War, like Poland, Finland, and Lithuania.
In a larger and more federalized EU, unanimity will have to be reduced. Achieving unanimity is harder with more members; if the EU grows from 27 members to something in the mid-30s, this will become practically impossible. Unsurprisingly, smaller countries like Austria and Hungary oppose efforts to expand qualified majority voting (QMV) over unanimity, while larger countries like France and Germany support it.
EU officials have also floated the idea of new members joining without full voting rights, in an attempt to break the logjam on enlargement. More integration via common policies in security and defense are inconceivable with unanimity, as the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is friendly with Moscow, would have a veto.
Growing Larger
While the Ukraine loan has opened the door to expanded QMV, Kyiv is unlikely to be the EU's next member. Not only does Orbán oppose Kyiv joining, but other countries like Poland and Germany have cast doubt on a quick accession process given the practical hurdles of a country at war and its endemic problems with the rule of law and corruption. Rather, a smaller country like Montenegro or Albania seems likelier to be next; the Western Balkan countries with about a tenth of Ukraine’s population are seeking to join by 2028 and 2030, respectively.
Nevertheless, if and when Ukraine joins the EU, it is likely to be in a larger and more nimble bloc than its present incarnation, precisely because reforms to voting rights are needed so that Ukraine even has the possibility of joining. The seeds of those reforms, if fully realized, will have come from the bloc's efforts to defend Ukraine.
Luke Johnson is a freelance reporter living in Berlin, who frequently writes about Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
