Pierre Mirel, Honorary Director-General at the European Commission, has proposed gradual accession as a way to address the stagnation and challenges faced in the EU enlargement processes, drawing from his experiences in the Western Balkan countries and elsewhere. Various periods in EU-Türkiye relations, with particular attention paid to the membership application processes and the Customs Union, were also narrated in the interview. Decades of transformation in Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy orientations under the AKP were discussed. The relation between external and internal dimensions of differentiated European integration has been explored, Article 7 TEU and dissensus being important points of discussion. An integrated approach to ecological and digital transition, incorporating socio-economic and demographic dimensions is explored in the end.