With the situation growing increasingly difficult for the Ukrainians in the war being waged on their own lands against Russia, the member states of the European Union decided officially in mid-December 2023 to open negotiations with Ukraine (and Moldavia) over EU accession. By speeding up what is normally a much longer process, the EU was sending a strong signal, mainly to Moscow, of its support for the Ukrainian government and its rejection of Russia’s territorial revisionism. In doing so, it raised a thorny question about what Ukraine’s borders should be, some of which would logically become the external frontiers of an expanded EU.
In this Chronicle, Jean-François Drevet examines this issue of borders — how they are determined and agreed upon — in the light of historical developments, still unresolved problems in certain member states or candidate countries, issues of self-determination, and the concerns all of this may engender in Europe. While one of the aims of European construction was to put an end (as far as possible) to territorial and, hence, border disputes — something which has been more or less achieved — EU expansion toward the East might well have the opposite effect, depending on the decisions taken over the frontiers of Ukraine, by inflaming debate (and opinion) on the setting of territorial borders.
