The rise of the European Enlargement State: blended finance, development banks and the new modalities of EU accession

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine reenergized the European Union's enlargement process. The accelerated accession process is defined by the deployment of large investment programmes, which seek to mobilise public and private funds based on EU budgetary means, driving blended financial investments into candidate states’ sectors deemed to require transformation for EU membership. This study traces the formation of this configuration, the rise of the European Enlargement State, within which the European Commission's Directorate-General for Enlargement and the Eastern Neighbourhood comes to be the nodal agency which coordinates between multilateral and national development banks, EU priorities and the goals of the candidate countries. Telling the formation story of the Enlargement State from 1999 onwards, we show how a shift of EU funds toward blended finance instruments incrementally changed the modalities of EU enlargement. While the variegated impacts of this emerging structure may not be fully grasped yet, its underlying principle is anchored in the logic of bankability–enhancing the Commission's policy steer while simultaneously risking limited local developmental effects and constraining Ukraine's market integration pathways.