The topic of EU enlargement encapsulates more than any other topic the interaction between the processes going on inside the European Union with those outside of it. It is discussed often in response to questions that go to the heart of the European project: Should the EU be considering new members, or should it consolidate first? What makes a country European? The question, ‘where does Europe end?’, has been asked repeatedly over the last three decades but never properly answered. In this episode, Will Murray speaks to HE Mr David Solomonia, the Georgian Ambassador to the Netherlands, and Professor Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor of Comparitive Governance at Leiden University, to shed light on this question.
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In series two of Global Europe Unpacked, commonspace.eu is collaborating with the City of The Hague to bring you several conversations looking at the future of Europe in the world. This series runs alongside the EU’s largest citizen consultation to date, the Conference on the Future of Europe. Our objective is to spark your interest in some of the important issues under discussion and encourage you to get involved.
The topic of European Union enlargement encapsulates more than any other topic the interaction between the processes going on inside the European Union with those outside of it. It is discussed often in response to questions that go to the heart of the European project: Should the EU be considering new members, or should it consolidate first? What makes a country European? The question, ‘where does Europe end?’, has been asked repeatedly over the last three decades but never properly answered. For a long time, expansion was the central foreign policy tool for the EU but now some in the bloc are very much against it.
In this episode, Will Murray speaks to the Ambassador of Georgia to the Netherlands, His Excellency David Solomonia, about why his country is set on joining the European Union, why it should be allowed to, and why Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova – or the “Associated Trio” – signed an agreement with each other last year to co-operate on EU accession.
We then hear an academic perspective of the different considerations associated with EU enlargement from Professor Antoaneta Dimitrova – a Professor of Comparative Governance at Leiden University.
Amongst other things, this episode discusses:
It should be noted that these conversations were recorded before Russia’s invaded Ukraine on 24 February.