From ‘power Europe’ to relational geopolitics 

Since 2019, the rhetoric of a ‘geopolitical Commission’ has hardened with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet the EU still lacks the unitary sovereignty classic geopolitics presumes. The central puzzle is how a multi-level, procedurally dense polity projects power without becoming a state – and why enlargement sits at the centre of that answer.  

In my Introduction to the Journal of European Public Policy Special Issue ‘Wartime Europe: EU Integration, Reform and Enlargement’, I argue that neither realist geopolitics (territory, deterrence, control) nor critical geopolitics (discourse, identity, meaning) can, on their own, capture the EU’s practice. But examining the EU through a hybrid lens – relational geopolitics – explains how the EU both deters aggression and projects power, and co-produces a shared ‘security crisis space’ with select partners. Power is exercised through bespoke relationships that entangle law, finance, infrastructure, and public legitimacy across borders.

Enlargement as Europe’s core power instrument 

As a relational technology, enlargement is not merely norm export or territorial extension: it is a way to bind the EU and select third parties into webs of rules and mutual obligations that change them and the EU at the same time. In wartime, that binding is overtly strategic. Entanglement raises the costs of aggression for adversaries, and institutionalises interdependence with allies – especially Ukraine – long before formal membership. 

Enlargement is a way to bind the EU and select third parties into webs of rules and mutual obligations that change them and the EU at the same time

The ongoing theme in this 🧭 EU Enlargement Dilemmas series is whether enlargement is a security imperative. What we’ve explored less is how it fits a broader EU geopolitical ‘grand strategy.’ The claim here is simple: Europe’s security runs through its economic and institutional plumbing. The security-economy nexus isn’t a grudging trade-off; it’s the very method by which the EU produces security.  

How relational geopolitics works in practice 

Relational geopolitics appears through mechanisms that are obvious up close, and strategic in the aggregate: 

• Sectoral co-production. Agricultural policy, single market integration, and regulatory templates become the arena of spatial ordering. Integration is negotiated, contested, and localised – rules are not simply ‘downloaded.’ The result is asymmetric but mutual: EU instruments constrain and empower domestic actors differently.  

• Infrastructural governance. Finance is strategy. Blended finance and the coordination of development banks constitute an 'enlargement state' that steers reform trajectories via investment pipelines and project selection, not only via legal conditionality. This is geopolitics conducted through spreadsheets, not just communiqués.  

• Temporal layering. The EU’s motivations for enlargement – transformation, stabilisation, demarcation, cohabitation – wax and wane with events. The EU’s geopolitical posture is not a switch; it is a moving repertoire whose meanings sediment, mutate, and sometimes contradict across time.  

• Public legitimation. Support for Ukraine remains strong yet uneven; publics are not echo chambers but possible co-producers of the EU’s strategic agency. Relational geopolitics must therefore be sustained in society, not just negotiated among elites.  

Each mechanism fuses security motives with economic instruments, tightening the economy-security braid that runs through this series' project. 

Why this isn’t just ‘normative power’, rebranded 

The relational approach is not a nostalgic return to normative power Europe. Wartime conditions exposed the limits of norm diffusion detached from hard constraints. Today’s repertoire explicitly integrates deterrence – through military support, defence, industrial cooperation, and readiness planning – with embedded interdependence in law and markets. The EU’s power is institutional and material, but enacted through relationships rather than unilateral command or coercion.

The EU’s power is institutional and material, but enacted through relationships rather than unilateral command or coercion

Crucially, relational geopolitics is not romantic. It accepts asymmetries and bargaining. It predicts differentiation – tighter external borders with some actors, deeper co-production with others – and it foregrounds fragility: relational assemblages can fray if political commitment weakens, if financing dries up, or if publics turn.  

Risks on the road to security by entanglement 

Three tensions stalk the project: 

1. Steering vs. ownership. The more Brussels steers through finance and rules, the more candidates may resist – or localise EU templates in ways that dilute aims. Managing contested asymmetry is a feature, not a bug.  

2. Ambition vs. procedure. Geopolitical urgency collides with the EU’s procedural DNA. The result can look like dissonance – soaring strategy with painstaking conditionality – but that layering is how the EU credibly commits without a sovereign centre.  

3. Integration vs. differentiation. Relational tools scale, but not uniformly. Sectoral gateways that work in Ukraine may not port one-to-one to Serbia or Georgia. The repertoire must be modular and adaptive across time and space.  

What follows for this series' wider agenda 

The 🧭 EU Enlargement Dilemmas series started with the proposal that enlargement is a security tool and that the economy-security nexus is where strategy meets practice. One year and more than 30 contributions later, it is perhaps time to sharpen that claim: enlargement is part of the EU’s operating system for geopolitics. It works by building and maintaining political space through ties (legal, financial, infrastructural, and civic) that can outlast crises and deter revisionism.

Enlargement is part of the EU’s operating system for geopolitics. It works by building and maintaining political space through ties that can outlast crises and deter revisionism

For policy and research, three implications align with this series: 

• Treat finance, regulation, and supply chains as first-order security variables in accession design, not downstream add-ons. Sequence them to build coalitions for reform early.  

• Measure public legitimation as a strategic constraint. If publics are relational nodes, then communication, distributional cushioning, and visible co-benefits are part of deterrence.  

• Anticipate fragility. Relational orders erode quietly before they fail loudly. Watch for slippage in project pipelines, regulatory enforcement, and cross-border network density as early warning signals.  

No.33 in a Loop series on 🧭 EU enlargement dilemmas

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