French attitude to Ukraine’s EU membership: from indifference through securitisation to alternatives

ABSTRACT

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, EU enlargement rebounded from the sidelines to take centre stage in the European debate. The overall support of the EU towards Kyiv was framed by a sudden moral imperative to help Ukraine enter the EU even though it had been stuck in the perpetual waiting room of Eastern Partnership for quite some time. France repeatedly attempted to form a pan-European body and created the European Political Community (EPC), allegedly intended primarily to help Ukraine. However, France has had an ambiguous attitude to EU enlargement which is domestically a politically sensitive topic. We examined to what extent a rationalist or securitisation-driven stance to EU enlargement prevails in France. To do so, an analysis of the geopolitical ambitions of France in Central and Eastern Europe together with its pan-European projects such as EPC was carried out. Our analysis proves that despite all the political statements of support for the EU candidate states, the French ruling elite and society do not favour enlargement. Potential member states are securitised in the political discourse and potential cons of their entry are emphasised. Moreover, French president Emmanuel Macron openly stated he expects the accession process of Ukraine would take decades.

KEYWORDS:

• France
• Ukraine
• EU
• European political community
• enlargement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. However, some ‘revisionist authors’ argue that de Gaulle’s European policy was primarily driven by the effort to secure favourable conditions for French industry and agriculture instead of a genuine push for closer political integration (Moravcsik 2012, 67).

2. Geopolitics as a separate field of study was virtually non-existent in the first decades after WW2 due to the negative connotation of the term ‘geopolitics’ under Nazism. The term reappeared in French political science in 1979 when the revue Hérodote was founded and reached a new high in 2002 when l’Institut français de géopolitique was created (see Lacoste 2008).

3. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 changed power dynamics inside EU in favour of France and to the detriment of Germany that was more economically and politically interwined with Russia. France drew on its EU presidency, gained dominance in Brussels and revived relations with USA (see Welc 2023).

4. The notion of differentiated integration or integration à la carte is a recurrent idea in discussions on European integration. The idea, under the name ‘Those Who Want More Do More’, was included among five scenarios discussed in Jean-Claude Juncker’s White Paper on the Future of Europe in 2017 (European Commission 2017).

5. One of the preconditions for the approval by all member states is a full Ukrainian victory in the war (restoration of territorial integrity); otherwise, they may be reluctant to support accession by Ukraine (see for example Sapir 2022). Moreover, Hungary has deep diplomatic disagreements with Kyiv over the rights of the Hungarian minority in the west of the country, shipments of armaments and general relations with Russia. It appears likely Hungary would object to Ukraine’s full membership.

6. See Standard Eurobarometer surveys or specials on migration.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Masaryk University under the Grant Perspectives of European Integration in the Context of International Politics V programme [grant number MUNI/A/1475/2023].