The Enlarged European Union

This book offers a strikingly new perspective on EU enlargement. Basing his findings on substantial empirical evidence, Zielonka presents a carefully argued account of the kind of political entity the European Union is becoming, with particular reference to recent enlargement.

This book explores one of the central challenges facing the EU today – how to reconcile enlargement with the pursuit of a stronger and more effective European Union. While the relationship between widening and deepening has been recognized for years as one of the big questions in the field of European integration, existing theoretical and empirical analyses of this relationship suffer from a variety of shortcomings. This book brings together a group of EU scholars who significantly advance our understanding of the relationship between widening and deepening. The contributors challenge a variety of ‘common wisdoms’ concerning the relationship between widening and deepening and offer nuanced theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between these two vital dimensions of European integration. Collectively, the contributors to this volume offer the most comprehensive picture available to date of the multi-faceted relationship between widening and deepening. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Focusing upon the emerging patterns of unity and diversity in the enlarged European Union, this study explores enlargement from the East and the impact this will have on the future identity of Europe.

This book explores how the European Commission faced the challenge of enlargement. Based on extensive interviews, the work provides a lively and readable picture of life within the Commission, exploring how thousands of newcomers were recruited and socialized and how they changed the organization, including its gender balance.

This collection of essays reflects on the fifth enlargement of the European Union, projected to take place in 2004. It examines the process of enlargement, its impact on both the candidate States and on the institutions and policies of the European Union. In so doing, it discusses these issues from a variety of perspectives - legal, economic and political - reflecting the different dimensions of the enlargement project.

In 2004 the European Union and NATO each added ten new member states, most from the post-communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. In order to prepare for membership, these countries had to make many thousands of institutional and legal adjustments. Indeed, they often tried to modernize in just a few years, implementing practices that evolved over many decades in Western Europe. This book emphasizes the way that policy elites in Central and Eastern Europe often 'ordered from the menu' of established Western practices. When did this emulation of Western practices succeed and when did it result in a fiasco? Professor Jacoby examines empirical cases in agriculture, regional policy, consumer protection, health care, civilian control of the military, and military professionalism from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, and the Ukraine. The book addresses debates in institutionalist theory, including conditionality, Europeanization, and external influences on democratic and market transitions.

This book sheds light on the contradictions underlying the European Union enlargement process, specifically to the Western Balkans, challenging the common assumption that the integration of an extended European space might be possible without mutual transformation of the institutions and agencies involved. Sekulić maps the institutional dimension of the accession process, and analyses how the conditionality principle shapes and constrains the space for negotiation within the EU. Combining ethnographic research with the discourse analysis of the European Commission’s reports and documents from 2008 to 2019 concerning the Western Balkan countries, the book also explores the perceptions and agency of the individuals involved in this process. The European Union and the Paradox of Enlargement will be of interest to students and scholars of European integration, the sociology of Europe and the EU, and Eastern European and Western Balkan studies.