In 2020, the European Commission proposed a new framework of the EU’s enlargement policy, justified by the deficiencies of the Bulgarian and Romanian EU membership. This article provides empirical evidence from the accession negotiation process that Bulgaria and Romania didn’t belong to a common group, separated from the other post-communist societies, which joined the EU in 2004. Our analysis identified several patterns of accession, distinguished by the number of negotiation chapters closed and the pace at which that was accomplished, which are counter-intuitive. They all fall under the rule: exceptional final outcomes are achieved by countries, which accelerated to the greatest extent. The acceleration matters a lot but it didn’t count in the Fifth enlargement. This ought to be remedied in the case of the Western Balkan, since any discrepancy between a country’s performance and its political evaluation hampers the credibility of EU accession, which in turn diminishes pro-European efforts.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Ágh, A. (2019). Declining Democracy in East-Central Europe: The Divide in the EU and Emerging Hard Populism. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Alegre, S.; Ivanova, I. and Denis-Smith, D. (2009). Safeguarding the rule of law in an enlarged EU: The cases of Bulgaria and Romania, ceps Special Report, Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies, April.
Bozhilova, D. (2008). Bulgaria’s quest for EU membership: The Europeanization of policies in transition. Author House.
Busek, E. and Mikulitsch, W. (2003). Die Europäische Union auf dem weg nach Osten. Wieser.
Chiva, C. and Phinnemore, D. (2012). The European Union’s 2007 enlargement. London: Routledge.
Christoffersen, P. S. (2007). From Helsinki to Seville, July 1999–June, 2002, in Vassiliou, G. (Ed.), The accession story: The EU from 15 to 25 countries. Oxford University Press, UK. 24–33.
De Ridder, E. and Kochenov, D. (2011). Democratic conditionality in the eastern enlargement: ambitious window dressing. European Foreign Affairs Reveview 16 (5): 589–605.
Dimitrov, G. (2016) The Academic Controversies over the EU Enlargement Conditionalities, paper presented at Effects of conditionality and post-conditionality on the quality of democracy in EU member states and beyond conference, November 8 (Tuesday), 2016, Central European University, Budapest.
Džankić, J., Keil, S. and Kmezić, M. (Eds.). (2018). The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans: a failure of EU conditionality?. Springer.
European Commission, 1997. Agenda 2000. Communication – Volume I – For a stronger and wider union, doc/97/6, Strasbourg, 15 July 1997, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/DOC_97_6, accessed last 31.03.2020.
Fagan, A. and Sircar, I. (2015). Judicial Independence in the Western Balkans: Is the EU’s ‘New Approach’ Changing Judicial Practices. Maxcap Working Paper Series, (2015).
Gateva, E. (2014). EU Enlargement Policy 20 Years after Copenhagen: Candidate and Potential Candidate Countries–Unexpected Policy Shapers. ECPR Joint Sessions Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, 10–15 April.
Gateva, E. (2015). European Union enlargement conditionality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gallagher, T. G. (2005). Theft of a nation: Romania since communism. Hurst & Co.
Grabbe, H. (2002). The Copenhagen deal for enlargement. Briefing Note, Centre for European Reform, December. (updated 29 January 2010). https://www.cer.eu/publications/archive/briefing-note/2002/copenhagen-deal-enlargement (accessed last 30.10.20).
Grabbe, H. (2006). The EU’s transformative power. Europeanization through conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Grabbe, H., (2014). Six lessons of enlargement ten years on: the EU’s transformative power in retrospect and prospect. J. Common Mkt. Stud., 52: 40–56.
Haralampiev, K., Dimitrov, G, and Stochev, S. (2015). Measuring Sociopolitical Distances between EU Member States and Candidates: A New Path. maxcap Working Paper Series, No. 15, October 2015.
Heydemann, G. & Vodička, K. (Eds.). (2017). From Eastern Bloc to European Union: comparative processes of transformation since 1990 (Vol. 22). Berghahn Books.
Hughes, J., Sasse, G. and Gordon, C. (2005). Europeanization and Regionalization in the EU’s enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. The myth of conditionality. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kmezić, M. (2019). EU Rule of Law Conditionality: Democracy or ‘Stabilitocracy’ Promotion in the Western Balkans?, in The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 87–109.
Kmezić, M. (2020) Rule of law and democracy in the Western Balkans: addressing the gap between policies and practice. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 20:1: 183–198.
Kochenov, D. (2008). EU Enlargement and the Failure of Conditionality: Pre-accession Conditionality in the Fields of Democracy and the Rule of Law (Vol. 59). Kluwer Law International BV.
Kochenov, D. and Bárd, P. (2018). Against Overemphasizing Enforcement in the Current Crisis: EU Law and Rule of Law in the (New) Member States. Europeanization Revisited: Central and Eastern Europe in European Union: 72–89.
Kochenov, D. and Pech, L. (2015). Monitoring and Enforcement of the Rule of Law in the EU: Rhetoric and Reality. European Constitutional Law Review, 11(3): 512–540.
Landaburu, E. (2007). The need for enlargement and differences from previous accessions, in Vassiliou, G. (Ed.) The Accession Story: The EU from 15 to 25 Countries. Oxford University Press, UK. 9–23.
Laursen, F. (2001). EU enlargement: interests, issues and the need for institutional reform. Making Policy in Europe. SAGE Publications: 206–228.
Laursen, F. (2005). The Eastern enlargements of the EU: why and how far?. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 5 No. 29 August 2005. http://aei.pitt.edu/8158/1/laursenfinal.pdf (last accessed 30.10.20).
Ludlow, P. (2004). The making of the new Europe: the European Councils in Brussels and Copenhagen 2002. EuroComment.
Maniokas, K. (2004). The method of the European Union’s enlargement to the east: a critical appraisal, in Dimitrova, A. (Ed.) Driven to change: The European Union’s enlargement viewed from the east. Manchester University Press. 17–37.
Maresceau, M. (Ed.). (1997). Enlarging the European Union: the relations between the EU and Central and Eastern Europe. NY: Longman. 3–22.
Mendelski, M. (2015). The pathological power of the EU: How EU-driven judicial reforms have undermined the development of the rule of law in South Eastern Europe. Southeastern Europe, 39(3): 318–346.
O’Brennan, J. (2006). ‘Bringing Geopolitics Back In’: Exploring the Security Dimension of the 2004 Eastern Enlargement of the European Union. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 19(1): 155–169.
Papadimitriou, D. & Gateva, El. (2009). Between enlargement-led Europeanisation and Balkan exceptionalism: an appraisal of Bulgaria’s and Romania’s entry into the European Union, Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe, № 25, 2009, http://www2.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/hellenicObservatory/.
Papakostas, N. (2012). Deconstructing the notion of EU conditionality as a panacea in the context of enlargement, Europeanisation after EU accession: transformation, reform, and compliance in recent EU member states. L’Europe en Formation 53(2): 215–235.
Potočnik, J., Černem, F., Erjavec, E. and Mrak, M. (2007). The accession of Slovenia to the EU, in: Vassiliou, G. (Ed.). (2007) The accession story: The EU from 15 to 25 countries. Oxford University Press, UK. 343–370.
Pridham, G. (2008). The EU’s political conditionality and post-accession tendencies, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 46, No. 2: 365–387.
Schimmelfennig, F. and Sedelmeier, U., (2020). The Europeanization of Eastern Europe: the external incentives model revisited. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(6): 814–833.
Sedelmeier, U. (2019). The European Union and democratization in Central and Southeastern Europe since 1989, in Ramet, S. and Hassenstab, C. (Eds.) Central and Southeast European Politics Since 1989. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 539–562.
Slapin, J. B. (2015). How European Union membership can undermine the rule of law in emerging democracies. West European Politics, 38(3), 627–648.
Smith, K. (2003). The evolution and application of EU membership conditionality, in M. Cremona, (Ed.). (2003). The enlargement of the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 105–139.
Smith, M. A. and Timmins, G. (2018). Building a bigger Europe: EU and nato enlargement in comparative perspective. Routledge.
Soulet, J.F. (2011). Histoire de l’Europe de l’Est, de la Seconde Guerre mondiale à nos jours. Armand Colin.
Telicka, P. & K. Bartak, (2007). The accession of the Czech Republic to the EU, in: Vassiliou, G. (Ed.). (2007). The accession story: The EU from 15 to 25 Countries. Oxford University Press, UK. 144–156.
van Meurs, W., de Bruin, R., van de Grift, L. and Hoetink, C. (2018).The unfinished history of European integration. Amsterdam University Press.
Vassiliou, G. (ed.). (2007). The accession story: The EU from 15 to 25 countries. Oxford University Press, UK.
Verheugen, G. (2005). Europa in der Krise: Für eine Neubegründung der europäischen Idee. Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln.
Wood, S. (2017). Germany and East-Central Europe: political, economic and socio-cultural relations in the era of EU enlargement. Routledge.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 570 | 115 | 11 |
Full Text Views | 40 | 8 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 84 | 20 | 0 |
In 2020, the European Commission proposed a new framework of the EU’s enlargement policy, justified by the deficiencies of the Bulgarian and Romanian EU membership. This article provides empirical evidence from the accession negotiation process that Bulgaria and Romania didn’t belong to a common group, separated from the other post-communist societies, which joined the EU in 2004. Our analysis identified several patterns of accession, distinguished by the number of negotiation chapters closed and the pace at which that was accomplished, which are counter-intuitive. They all fall under the rule: exceptional final outcomes are achieved by countries, which accelerated to the greatest extent. The acceleration matters a lot but it didn’t count in the Fifth enlargement. This ought to be remedied in the case of the Western Balkan, since any discrepancy between a country’s performance and its political evaluation hampers the credibility of EU accession, which in turn diminishes pro-European efforts.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 570 | 115 | 11 |
Full Text Views | 40 | 8 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 84 | 20 | 0 |