04/11/2016
Johannes Hahn, the European Commissioner in charge of Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, is currently in the process of finalising the Commission’s 2016 Enlargement Package. This set of documents outlines the Commission’s policy on enlargement and reports on the progress of candidate and potential candidate countries. But with Brexit dominating the agenda, what is likely to be announced and what particular challenges and prospects are there for EU enlargement in the coming years?
Lessons from Brexit
It is impossible to discuss the issues of enlargement and EU integration while ignoring Brexit and its implications, not to mention the reasons why the UK chose to vote the way it did on 23 June. Some of the explanations given for the vote include discontent among citizens over the various challenges the EU has faced in recent years, notably the financial crisis, the debt crisis in southern Europe, fiscal constraints within the Eurozone, the migration crisis, and terrorism. Taken together, these developments are assumed to have increased Euroscepticism, ultimately leading to Brexit.
The immediate implications of the Brexit vote have been visible in short-run effects on the UK economy, particularly the depreciation of the pound and reduced prices of assets on financial markets, as well as a predicted slowing of economic growth over the coming years due to increased economic and political uncertainty (at least according to IMF growth projections). And at first glance, it appears to be a lose-lose scenario, with the EU losing an economy accounting for 17.5% of EU GDP (2015 GDP measured in current prices) while the UK stands to lose its access to the EU’s single market.
