Towards a New Generation of Safeguard Clauses: Making Conditionality Stick after Accession

As the EU moves toward further enlargement, integrating new member states while safeguarding the Union’s value-based order remains a critical challenge. Past accessions have shown that while enlargement strengthens the EU’s economic and geopolitical standing, it also carries certain risks, including the possibility of democratic backsliding among new members. In 2026, these risks have become particularly salient, as all current candidate countries continue to struggle – albeit to varying degrees – with systemic deficiencies. Doubts have therefore emerged as to whether the Union can even afford to enlarge without first establishing fully effective mechanisms to deter and sanction backsliding among existing member states. Recognising the dangers of keeping enlargement on hold pending the Union’s internal reforms, the Staged Accession Model proposed, in 2023, “a silver bullet” in the form of enhanced post-accession safeguard clauses. While discussions about safeguards have intensified since then – even dominating the 2025 EU Enlargement Forum – there still remains a lack of clarity as to how they should be adapted to the specificities of the current enlargement context. In response to growing demand, this paper analyses their operational mechanics in depth and, drawing on past practice, proposes improvements to their design and application, with particular emphasis on safeguarding the rule of law after accession. In doing so, it argues that a new generation of safeguard clauses could and should serve as an important means of ensuring that newcomers are welcomed without undue delay, yet effectively kept in check even when the pre-accession conditionality is gone.

1 The original Model was published in 2021. Only with its second iteration, in the form of Template 2.0 for Staged Accession in the EU, the introduction of safeguard clauses. Milena Mihajlović, Steven Blockmans, Strahinja Subotić, and Michael Emerson, Template 2.0 for Staged Accession to the EU, European Policy Centre (CEP) & Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), August 2023.

2 European Commission, EU Enlargement Forum, November 2025.