Grok / europeanconservative.com
Brussels has marked the 40th anniversary of Spain and Portugal’s accession to the then European Economic Community (EEC) as if it were the definitive postcard of a happy Europe: modernization, convergence, prosperity, the “heart of Europe.” Ursula von der Leyen has gone so far as to state that Spain has played a “fundamental role” in building the EU and that, thanks to European funds, the country was transformed “from Asturias to Andalusia.” She has also highlighted Spain’s leadership in renewable energy and sustainable transportation.
There is some truth in that narrative. According to the European Commission itself, Spain has received more than €150 billion in cohesion funding since 1986. Portugal, for its part, has received over €100 billion in EU funds, with a visible impact on infrastructure and basic public services. The Commission sums up the balance with a political figure that is hard to ignore: more than €250 billion invested in Spanish and Portuguese regions since accession. In the 1980s and 1990s, that “European contract”—market access, funding, and institutional stability—was real.
The problem is that the EU now inviting new members no longer offers the same contract. And if the “8+1” enlargement plan for 2030 (the Western Balkans plus Ukraine and Moldova and an additional candidate from the eastern neighborhood) is pushed forward without correcting this drift, the Union may end up resembling less the project that attracted Spain and Portugal and more a structure that is increasingly centralized, more permeable to third parties, and paradoxically less capable of protecting its own members.
To understand why accession was attractive for Spain and Portugal, one must recall an element that is now deliberately downplayed: the veto (unanimity) acted as a counterweight for medium-sized and smaller countries. Joining a club where, on essential matters, decisions could not be imposed purely by demographic arithmetic was part of the promise.
That principle is now under direct pressure. In 2023, the European Parliament adopted a resolution with proposals to reform the Treaties aimed, among other things, at extending qualified majority voting and reducing the areas subject to unanimity. In parallel, unanimity in foreign policy has been framed as a cost to be overcome, feeding a political climate favorable to replacing the veto with majority rule.
It can be debated whether the EU needs greater agility; what cannot be denied is that such a shift would alter the nature of the internal balance—and, with it, the incentive for future accessions. Joining would no longer mean “entering with guarantees,” but accepting that residual sovereignty is decided by votes in which the largest states carry the greatest weight.
In a Union of 35 members, moving from unanimity to majorities is not a technical adjustment; it is a de facto constitutional change.
The Common Market was, for Spain and Portugal, an accelerator of investment and convergence. Today’s Single Market, however, is more ambiguous: it is increasingly open to products from third countries at a time when internal regulatory pressure makes production within the EU more expensive.
The most visible example is agriculture. Official Commission data on agri-food trade show sharp increases in imports of cereals and other products in recent periods, while Eurostat closely tracks the evolution of EU–Ukraine trade, confirming the structural weight of that exchange. Politically, the debate has shifted from “everything enters in the name of solidarity” to the introduction of limits and ad hoc tariffs when quotas are exceeded—precisely in response to pressure from agricultural sectors in several Member States.
This matters for a strategic reason: many of the countries that would join under the “8+1” enlargement have economies with a weaker industrial base and a heavier relative reliance on agriculture. If the Single Market already generates tensions among existing European producers, what will happen when more internal competitors are added without reinforcing community preference or establishing robust compensation mechanisms?
Ukraine is the ultimate stress test. Not only because of the politically explosive fact of integrating a country at war, but also because of its economic structure. In 2020, Ukraine had 41.3 million hectares of agricultural land (32.7 million hectares of arable land). By comparison, the total agricultural area used in the EU stood at around 157 million hectares, with France and Spain among the largest producers. This is a massive agricultural actor, with real capacity to influence prices, quotas, and internal balances.
This is not an abstract hypothesis. Various official sources and institutional analyses confirm that a significant share of Ukrainian grain exports is destined for the EU and that agri-food trade is a central component of the economic relationship. Politically, defensive responses are already visible: safeguard mechanisms, quotas, the reintroduction of duties on certain products, and national debates on protecting European farmers.
If today, with Ukraine outside the Union, the EU already feels compelled to impose limits to prevent distortions, how would equilibrium be maintained with Ukraine inside—enjoying full access to the Single Market and to EU financial instruments?
The EU that modernized Spain and Portugal was built on a simple idea: convergence in exchange for clear rules and political guarantees. Today, the institutional narrative looks different: rapid enlargement driven by geostrategy, centralization to “make the system work,” and an internal economy under external pressure while regulatory compliance at home becomes ever more costly.
Hence, the growing gap between Brussels and its citizens. The “New Europe” as currently designed seems less focused on everyday realities—cost of living, wages, food security, industrial competitiveness—and more oriented toward sustaining a political-administrative ecosystem that lives off permanent expansion, increasingly supported by mass immigration: more competences, more programs, more conditionality, more “governance.” Enlargement, in this context, risks becoming a pretext: “We must reform (centralize) because we are more.”
If this path continues, the EU will not be repeating the success of 1986; it will be manufacturing a different Union—less democratic in essentials and more economically fragile. Spain and Portugal joined a Europe that promised to level the playing field. Europe now preparing to enlarge seems, all too often, designed to decide without levelling.
