Eastward enlargement of the EU — EU strategy and future challenges

This paper assesses the prospects for eastward enlargement of the EU and the challenges that enlargement poses both to the applicant countries and to the EU and existing member states. The paper analyzes the EU's pre‐accession strategy and the institutional and policy issues facing the EU in proceeding successfully with eastward enlargement While the EU's pre‐accession strategy does represent a substantial commitment to eventual accession of the central and east European applicant countries, the overall approach is technocratic and ad hoc. The lack of a clear strategic outlook reflects in part uncertainty about the future direction of the EU and the impact that other major policy developments, notably the single currency, will have. It also reflects lack of agreement among EU member states about the future development of the EU and differing commitments to the process of enlargement. While the criteria and timetable for accession are not precise, substantially more progress has been made with the pre‐accession framework than with institutional and policy change. An EU of 27 member states will have to address seriously the question of differentiated integration or flexibility. Flexibility is a topic at the 1996 intergovernmental conference but since the first accessions are unlikely to occur before 2002 at the earliest, major institutional decisions at this stage are unlikely. Serious discussion of policy reform is itself on hold until after the IGC. The twin dangers of a relatively slow eastward enlargement are firstly that EU institutional structures may develop in an ad hoc and inadequate way and secondly that it could undermine — or at least not support — the political and economic transition processes in some of the central and east European countries.