The Brief – Quantum leap

In science, the phrase ‘quantum jump’ or ‘quantum leap’ refers to a change of the state of an electron in an atom or molecule from one energy state to another, but in everyday usage, it describes a great improvement in a situation or a significant advance.

Hopefully, Ukraine, which has earned the EU’s admiration for its courageous fight against the Russian aggressor, will trigger a quantum leap, invigorating and expanding our union.

The 15-16 December EU summit has a heavy agenda, and one of the trickiest items is greenlighting the start of accession talks with Ukraine.

Council President Charles Michel was in Budapest on Monday because he is trying to defuse the obstructions mounted by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has repeatedly said that negotiations on Ukraine’s accession must not begin.

We have already argued that Orbán is unlikely to back down easily.

But let’s imagine that the EU is still capable – as it has been through many decades – of overcoming internal dissent. Let’s assume that Ukraine will be given a date to start accession talks at the December summit.

We have seen how Ukrainians fight (“Fight Like Ukrainian” has even become a commercial trademark), and we have every reason to believe that Ukrainian negotiators will be equally motivated and effective.

Judging by Kyiv’s excellent communication skills, developed since the Maidan revolution, but especially after the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion, the EU would find it hard to look the other way as Ukraine progresses with the negotiations.

The EU’s byzantine system of “annual reports” on the progress of the EU hopefuls could be replicated by Ukraine’s annual report on the EU’s (lack of) readiness for enlargement.

We can imagine such a report saying that progress in terms of EU enlargement this year is not possible because the Netherlands is in a mess following their election, Hungary is blackmailing Brussels in the hope of unblocking frozen EU funds, and France is reluctant to share the generous EU funds for agriculture with new countries.

Although others have been knocking on the EU’s door for many years, Ukraine, a newcomer to the club, is most likely to become the locomotive of EU enlargement – be it only for the demographic factor, if not what the EU calls “administrative capacity”.

The country of 40 million people (a tentative figure given the war situation and the many refugees) is much larger than all the rest of the hopefuls combined:

Serbia has seven million, North Macedonia two million, Albania 2.7 million, Montenegro 0,6 million, Bosnia and Herzegovina 3 million, Kosovo 1.8 million, Moldova 2.6 million, and Georgia with 3.7 million – altogether, a total of 23.7 million.

But more than that, Ukraine will bring to the EU the most combat-ready army of the collective West and a purpose – to strengthen Europe’s eastern flank.

Europe is a continent without a clear eastern border, and that has always been the EU’s weakness, even if many don’t seem to notice. Conversely, Russia has no clear-cut western border but has a policy of ‘Novorossiya’, a Kremlin version of enlarging by grabbing others’ territories by force.

With NATO’s latest wave of enlargement (Finland and hopefully Sweden) and Ukraine’s probable integration into the bloc, the continental EU will become a reality.

By then, the Western Balkans should also have overcome their internal problems, contributing significantly to their slow progress.

Needless to say, these internal problems are artificially exacerbated by Russia, and the EU has not been very efficient in helping to resolve them.

Today’s EU looks like a patchwork, but it will become a continent with the next big enlargement. It’s as simple as that, and the December summit can become the invisible moment that triggers a quantum leap.

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The Roundup

National and EU-level support goes a long way towards supporting research into gene therapies against rare diseases, according to German researchers, but Europe still lags behind North American countries in innovation.

Russia accused Bulgaria of malice and stupidity on Thursday for refusing to allow Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s plane to fly through its airspace to attend a meeting in Skopje, North Macedonia.

The Spanish EU presidency aims to conclude negotiation on the migration reform package, a series of laws on migration management, before the end of the year, multiple sources from the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament confirmed to Euractiv.

Achieving the EU’s ambitions for a more sustainable, resilient and competitive economy requires actions across many sectors. Europe’s bioeconomy, which converts renewable resources from agriculture, forests, and seas – including residues and waste – into food, feed, materials, and energy, contributes to this effort.

Whole grains must be integrated into children’s diets early in life to create healthy lifelong habits and curb life-threatening diseases, according to experts, who called for the inclusion of grains into the EU School Scheme and public procurement of food.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament’s transport committee voted on Wednesday to make it easier to enforce penalties on motorists visiting from other EU countries for traffic violations – though local authorities say the measures do not go far enough.

Europe and the world face many technical and societal challenges when it comes to climate change and conservation efforts. While there has been a recent push to increase awareness of these issues, these efforts often fall short of their goals in generating actionable change.

China did the world “a big favour” by bringing down the cost of clean technologies like solar panels, said Fatih Birol, the chief of the International Energy Agency (IEA). But with increased economic clout also comes responsibility, he told Euractiv ahead of the COP28 international climate summit in Dubai.

The EU should take Ukraine’s military needs into account as it designs Europe’s future defence industry strategy, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.

EU member states’ position on the long-term residents directive is ‘far less ambitious’ than the European Parliament’s position, indicating tough negotiations ahead, MEP Damian Boeselager, who will be Parliament’s lead negotiator on the proposal, warned in an interview with Euractiv.

Green chief Terry Reintke (Germany), Groene Links MEP Bas Eickhout (Netherlands), former Latvian presidential candidate Elīna Pinto, and the spokesperson for the Young European Greens, Benedetta Scuderi, are running to be one of the two European Greens’ lead candidates in EU elections.

The German government must present emergency programmes to improve its climate policy in the transport and buildings sector, a Berlin court ruled on Thursday after the country repeatedly failed to meet emission reduction targets.

Last but not least, don’t miss this week’s EU Politics Decoded: Losing Sunak’s marbles.

Look out for…

• Commission President Ursula von der Leyen participates in COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in United Arab Emirates Friday-Saturday.
• Parliament President Roberta Metsola discusses with young people in the debate “It’s not that simple. Youth and Politics” in Lisbon Friday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]