Offer the four freedoms to Ukraine, Moldova and the Balkans

To revive the EU accession process, the EU should offer membership in the Single Market, including the four freedoms, as a credible and reachable interim goal to Ukraine, Moldova, and any of the six Western Balkan nations interested in it.

ESI background: Scorecard 2024 – What the Commission assessments reveal (31 October 2024)

ESI report: The Balkan Turtle Race – A warning for Ukraine (13 July 2022)

ESI newsletter: Europe, Ukraine and a second Treaty of Rome, 16 June 2022

IWM, EU enlargement and Europe's Future. How to Revive one of the EU's Most Successful Policies (14 September 2023)

The challenges posed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine's desire to join European institutions require a strategic vision of Europe's future. It also requires restoring the credibility of the current accession process.

Since Ukraine and Moldova applied for EU membership in February 2022, both countries have become official candidate countries and have formally started EU accession negotiations. However, the process risks turning into another Balkan Turtle Race, with actual prospects for membership disappearing into a far and uncertain future. Hungary blocks the opening of the first negotiation chapters. Others, like Germany and France, have made clear that before taking on new members, the EU has to address internal issues, in particular its decision making procedures. A third group insists that the Western Balkans must not be left behind. 

There is a way forward that addresses these concerns by offering, in addition to the regular accession process, the following:

All candidate countries that meet the criteria to join the EU, including respect for human rights and the rule of law, before the EU will be in a position to accept new members, these countries should immediately gain full access to the European Single Market and the four freedoms – the free movement of goods, people, services and capital – and EU funds. Their citizens and businesses would then enjoy the same rights and privileges as citizens and businesses of EU members.

This offer should be made to Ukraine, Moldova and to any Balkan democracy that is interested. It creates an achievable goal. Between 2000 and 2002, it took Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia 34 months to begin and complete their accession negotiations.

Admitting countries that meet the criteria, including the rule of law, to the Single Market does not complicate EU decision making. Joining the Single Market does not first require EU internal reform. Nor does it risk rendering the EU dysfunctional. It could be achieved by Ukraine, Moldova and West Balkan countries alike.

The instrument to achieve these ends already exists: it is the current accession process. Every year the European Commission publishes reports on how far each candidate is from meeting EU standards and requirements for the Single Market – from environmental to competition policy – and on the rule of law. 

Once the Commission confirms that a candidate has met these conditions, the Council should offer full access to the Single Market and the four freedoms, and negotiate a treaty similar to the already-existing EU-Western Balkans Transport Community Treaty: a European Economic Community II (EEC), centered around the four freedoms as a framework.

This would be visionary and familiar. This is how Finland, Sweden and Austria joined first the Single Market in 1994 and then the EU in 1995. This was the vision of legendary Commission president Jacques Delors. In his inaugural speech to the European Parliament in January 1989 Delors posed the question how to "reconcile the successful integration of the Twelve without rebuffing those who are just as entitled to call themselves Europeans?" Delors was referring to Austria, Sweden, Norway and Finland. He then offered them a "more structured partnership with common decision-making and administrative institutions."

Three years later, on 2 May 1992, Austria, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden signed the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement. They became members of the Single Market on 1 January 1994. This two-step process was no detour. It made EU membership more likely.

Of course, Ukraine in 2025 is not Sweden or Austria in 1994. It is a country at war in a continent on the edge. But this makes a robust strategy for future European integration more, not less, urgent. The present moment requires the bold realism of those who negotiated the Coal and Steel Community and the Treaty of Rome.