European Political Community: The Future of an Intuition

Revisiting the question of Europe’s organization in May 2022 did not pre-empt the response of the 27 to the candidacies of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, and especially not, despite widespread suspicions, the French response, as demonstrated by the commitment of the French Presidency of the EU Council to granting candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, which was formalized by the European Council decision of June 2022, or its mediation efforts to lift the Bulgarian veto on the opening of accession negotiations with Northern Macedonia. And France has been pointing this out ad nauseam for the past year: the European Political Community is not an alternative to enlargement. On the contrary, the French proposal was a gesture of goodwill. At a time of historic upheaval, it was a way of rapidly creating the political space needed to identify and express the common interests of all European states, on an equal footing and with equal dignity.