Enlargement Through Integration: Aligning Pre-Accession and EU Instruments

Nadija Afanasieva & Rostyslav Tomenchuk

How can the EU avoid new peripheries after enlargement? As the EU reshapes enlargement and prepares the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028–2034, the challenge is not only political accession, but economic convergence. If EU enlargement, pre-accession instruments and EU instruments for members remain disconnected, structural gaps will persist. This paper argues for aligning reforms with investment logic before membership locks in asymmetries.

Recommendations

1. Opening many instruments in a limited way often results in symbolic participation. Instead, EU policy should concentrate on fewer programmes where candidate countries can participate meaningfully, with sufficient support and investment coordination.
2. The European Commission should ensure that the European Competitiveness Fund actively integrates candidate countries through joint projects and structured participation mechanisms.
3. The European Commission should introduce territorial participation criteria within directly managed programmes to secure the inclusion of candidate-country actors in project consortia, drawing on practices from Interreg Europe. In parallel, it should ensure that pre-accession assistance covers co-financing requirements and supports technical structures in candidate countries, following models such as the Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine.
4. The European Commission and national authorities should complement legal approximation in Indicative Strategy Papers with territorially grounded development plans financed through IPA resources. For Ukraine, the 20% regional allocation should be expanded through oblast-level plans aligned with Member State national and regional planning models.
5. EU budgetary authorities should ensure that the next MFF allocation for Ukraine balances reconstruction needs with investments in long-term economic convergence. Funding should support regional development capacity and integration into EU value chains.
6. The European Commission should align indicators in Indicative Strategy Papers and IPA instruments to strengthen economic capacity-building and incentivise value-chain integration between candidate countries and Member States.
7. Candidate country governments, particularly Ukraine, should proactively use Global Europe resources to establish management, control and audit systems aligned with Member State standards before accession.

This policy paper is part of the project ‘Central Europe and Future EU Enlargement’. The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund.

An expanded version of the paper is available on the website of the Institute for Public Affairs.