\u201cEnlargement must remain demanding and merit-based to ensure its success and credibility,\u201d France\u2019s minister delegate for European affairs, Benjamin Haddad, told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
The biggest concern among governments is fear of political blowback against any leader who brings new EU members into a national debate, three of the diplomats and one senior EU official involved with the enlargement process said. Like others in this article, they were granted anonymity to discuss talks that are largely confidential.<\/p>\n
A repeat of the \u201cPolish plumber\u201d debate that gripped many EU countries before Warsaw\u2019s admission in 2004, when some politicians argued that cheap Polish labor would replace highly paid jobs in Western Europe, is among the worries in capitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same semi-populist, semi-xenophobic arguments we heard about the Poles, we are likely to hear with the Ukrainians and any other candidate,\u201d said a diplomat from a mid-size EU country. \u201cWho are these people? What are they going to be doing in our club? Will they be coming to take our jobs? <\/p>\n
No appetite<\/p>\n
This concern is particularly strong in France, which by law would have to hold a referendum on admitting any new member. A vote on Ukraine in particular could feed into the campaign of populist right-wing National Rally leader Jordan Bardella, who polls show winning the first round of the 2027 presidential election against center-right rival Edouard Philippe.<\/p>\n
But France is not alone. EU diplomats said that Germany, the Netherlands and Italy all argue that the EU\u2019s arduous \u201cmerit-based\u201d process must be respected with no exceptions for geopolitical reasons, even if they understand why countries such as Ukraine and Moldova are under pressure to join quickly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEnlargement must remain demanding and merit-based to ensure its success and credibility,\u201d France\u2019s minister delegate for European affairs,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6715,13490,8612,31,365,33184,33,6561,2000,299,5187,36,1824,2190,2199,42,13491,25482,9891,332,811,812,3053,657,1220,1781],"class_list":["post-892694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-benjamin-haddad","tag-croatia","tag-cyprus","tag-democracy","tag-denmark","tag-edouard-philippe","tag-elections","tag-enlargement","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-hungary","tag-italy","tag-jordan-bardella","tag-moldova","tag-montenegro","tag-referendum","tag-russia","tag-security","tag-sweden","tag-the-netherlands","tag-ukraine","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","tag-viktor-orban"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116401279198346978","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}