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Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the topic of EU enlargement has reached the top ofthe EU policy agenda, swiftly granting candidate status to Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, andunblocking some of the stalled accession processes in the Western Balkans. The paper examines theformal and substantive EU membership criteria and proposes ways to improve the accession processto make it more effective, fair and merit-based. The paper recommends that the EU should improveits EU enlargement policy by adopting a two-step accession process: joining the EU Single Marketwithin 5 years of opening accession talks and achieving full EU membership within 10 years—subject to demonstrating a track record in upholding the EU's fundamental values. It also recom-mends improving the decision-making process extending qualified-majority voting (QMV) to EUenlargement policy to prevent Member States from politicising the accession process on issuesunrelated to EU enlargement.
