Following the 2004/2007 ‘Big Bang’ enlargement, the European Union turned away from further enlargement prospects. Projects such as the European Neighbourhood Policy were launched with the express goal of limiting enlargement prospects, and established enlargement commitments to regions such as the Western Balkans fell out of favour. The EU’s apathy towards enlargement seemed to change in February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine applied for membership four days after Russia’s invasion, with Moldova and Georgia following less than a week later. The EU granted Moldova and Ukraine candidate status in June 2022, four months after Ukraine’s application. To date, no candidacy application has been processed with that speed. As the EU claims that the accession process is merit-based, with a candidate’s progression being directly related to their compliance with the Copenhagen criteria, that raises two questions: Why did the EU so radically change its view on enlargement, and were Moldova and Ukraine treated favourably in the accession process?

Using a comparative framework, this thesis evaluates the candidacy progression of Moldova and Ukraine against four Western Balkan candidate states: Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. It examines how the EU has engaged with those states, and the regions in which they exist, and seeks to determine what factors influenced the EU’s decision to revisit enlargement in 2022, and whether those factors positively influenced Moldova and Ukraine in the accession process. These factors will be identified through Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier’s four dimensions of enlargement, which were developed to understand the factors influencing the 2004/2007 enlargement. International relations theory is also considered in determining whether these factors influenced the EU’s enlargement decisions. This thesis concludes that the decisions to grant candidacy to Moldova and Ukraine were influenced by factors unrelated to the Copenhagen criteria, specifically the exploitation of EU self-perceptions as a promoter of democratic norms.