EU Enlargement Under Geopolitical Time Pressure: Insights from the European Parliament’s Western Balkans Delegations

After years of stagnation following Croatia’s 2013 accession, the EU enlargement process regained momentum after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This geopolitical shock held out the promise of EU membership for the Eastern Trio (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) and revitalised the accession trajectory of the long-standing Western Balkan candidates. While most scholarship focuses on the Council and Commission, the impact of this geopolitical shock on enlargement politics within the European Parliament remains comparatively underexplored. Taking the invasion as a critical juncture, this paper examines its impact on EP delegations and their work in Joint Parliamentary Committees (JPCs) with Western Balkan countries during the 9th parliamentary term. We find that there has been a noticeable change in the immediate rhetorical reactions of individual MEPs within these interparliamentary forums, but little difference in the institutional response of the JPCs as a whole. In doing so, the analysis speaks to broader debates on the geopoliticisation of EU enlargement and the role of interparliamentary cooperation and diplomacy in a changing geopolitical context.