Eka Tkeshelavishili, former Deputy Prime Minister of Georgia, delivered this year’s first high-level lecture entitled ‘Enlargement at the Turn of the Global Order‘.

As the international order fragments and power politics returns, EU enlargement is acquiring greater strategic significance for both the Union and candidate countries. U.S.–China rivalry, shifts in U.S. policy towards Europe, Russia’s revisionism, and growing competition over trade, technology, infrastructure, critical minerals and supply chains are reshaping the environment in which states make their choices. Malign foreign interference is increasingly a tool in this contest, seeking to influence political trajectories and constrain sovereign choices by exploiting domestic vulnerabilities. For the EU, enlargement is increasingly important for building the scale, economic strength and political and security weight needed to shape the emerging order rather than adapt to one shaped by others. For candidate countries, accession becomes more consequential as fragmentation increases the vulnerabilities of remaining outside a larger integrated political and economic space, while membership offers a stronger basis for protecting their agency and advancing their interests. Conversely, a faltering accession process increases incentives to hedge across competing centres of power, opening further space for external influence. The question is whether the EU and candidate countries can adapt enlargement to these new realities while preserving the democratic transformation, conditionality and sovereign choice that remain at its core.

The lecture took the form of a dinner address. The dinner also provided an opportunity to discuss the takeaways of the day’s proceedings (i.e. ‘confessionals’ with ambassadors from candidate countries and EU officials) with invited guests from the EU institutions and members of the advisory board and consortium of REUNIR.