Brussels, 04 June 2026, dtt-net.com – The offices of French President Emmanuel Macron and of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have outlined initial ideas of the two governments to other 25 EU member countries, for what they call “gradual integration” of candidate countries.
In the “non-paper” obtained by dtt-net.com, the two member countries of the EU say that bloc’s enlargement policy needs “a new momentum”, with which the European bloc “must provide additional incentives as part of a merit-based, gradual integration process and streamline the current process to make it more efficient and to allow for faster and deeper integration into the EU on the basis of the Copenhagen criteria.”
“The work of the aspiring countries, the [European] Commission and the Council should focus on the substance of the reforms rather than on procedural steps. Regular Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) could be better mobilized to ensure such political steer,” they write in the “non-paper”.
“In addition, we propose a pre-accession strategy containing a toolbox with a set of building blocks bringing candidate countries effectively closer to the EU through a more structured gradual integration, thus providing additional incentives for reforms. These building blocks should build on the progress made in the accession process and be reversible in case of backsliding of the relevant candidate country in its reform process and with regard to the EU core values and principles. While each candidate country should profit from a tailor-made approach, the new approach would offer immediate and tangible progress to all candidate countries. The aim of full EU membership remains unaffected, our intention is neither to replace full EU membership nor to prolong the path towards it but the opposite: We want to create incentives which foster swifter progress on that path. This way, we ensure that gradual integration contributes to successful EU enlargement – strengthening the EU as a whole,” French and German government say, and invite the European Commission to present “proposals to facilitate the gradual integration” of candidate countries on their path towards EU accession.
“This should cover i.a. privileged access to the Internal Market on the basis of their substantive progress in the negotiations and closer links to the European institutions in the daily decision-making process, e.g. by granting progressive observer status to candidate countries in EU institutions meetings under conditions respecting the autonomy of the EU decision-making process,” reads the “non-paper”.
At the same time, Pairs and Berlin propose …
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