Narrating Europe’s future history through collective memory and emotions: the EU and NATO’s enlargement decisions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EU granted candidacy status to Ukraine, Moldova, and later Georgia. NATO decided to expand to Finland and Sweden. In this article, we explain how the emotions-memory nexus has enabled both organizations’ decisions to enlarge. By introducing a rhetorical mechanism that enables the institutions to take action, we explain the role of emotions-memory nexus in bringing about the simultaneous enlargement decisions of the EU and NATO between 2022 and 2024 in the face of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Employing emotion discourse analysis to assess the official statements, conclusions and adopted documents of the EU and NATO, the article concludes that referrals to a shared past is scarce in the current enlargement decisions coupled with a strategic amnesia about the EU’s neighbourhood policy and past decisions on candidacy processes. We find that the EU decision to announce a revival of enlargement policy to include Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia mainly focused on values and norms through an inward-looking process, due to internal deliberations of the EU, whereas NATO’s enlargement decision was taken by an outward-facing process, i.e. underlining, vis-à-vis third countries (externally), the mission of NATO for providing security in Europe.