EU enlargement and foreign direct investment into transition economies revisited

It is highly likely that EU accession negotiation had a large influence on foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Central and Eastern European countries involved therein. We found that as the membership talks progressed, the effect of attracting FDI to candidate states tended to increase gradually. It also became clear that EU member candidate countries experienced an adverse impact on FDI at the very final phase of the negotiation. This might have been due to the substantial revision of conventional FDI incentives, which most likely was the price paid for becoming new EU members. The relationship between the progress in the EU enlargement process and FDI received by the candidate countries was not a simple positive relationship, but followed a reverse J-shaped curve.