Beyond 25—the changing face of EU enlargement: commitment, conditionality and the Constitutional Treaty

Enlargement is widely regarded as the most successful external relations’ tool of the European Union (EU). By offering the prospect of membership to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, the EU not only responded to their desires for closer integration but also bought itself considerable political influence over domestic and international policy developments in the region. As a consequence, it has claimed a leading role in promoting and providing direction to the political and economic reform processes that governments have been pursuing. It has also contributed to regional stability and security. In the light of this success, faced with the need to respond to other countries’ aspirations for membership and conscious of the need to play a role in addressing security challenges in the wider Europe, the EU has since held out the prospect of membership to other, but not all, European countries. Currently there are eight countries, all in South-Eastern Europe, whose relations with the EU are developing within a perspective of possible membership. Two of these—Bulgaria and Romania—are scheduled to join in either 2007 or 2008. Others—Croatia and Turkey—have recently opened accession negotiations and according to projections could enter the EU in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Macedonia has applied for EU membership having concluded, like Croatia, a Stabilization and Association Agreement, and accession negotiations are expected to be opened soon following a positive avis from the Commission in November 2005. Negotiations on a Stabilization and Association Agreement are underway with Albania, began with Serbia and Montenegro in October 2005 and are imminent with Bosnia-Herzegovina. Other countries in the region and beyond have also signalled their interest in acceding to the EU. Moldova has membership aspirations, as do Ukraine and Georgia. And analysts as well as representatives and members of the EU’s various institutions have advocated offering these countries a membership perspective too. Given the considerable expansion of the EU since the end of the cold war— first from 12 to 15 member states in 1995 and then to 25 member states in 2004— casual observers of the EU could be forgiven for thinking that almost any European country can, should and will be offered the perspective of eventual membership and that further enlargement of the EU is inevitable. With the EU setting out the conditions that candidates must meet in order to succeed, monitoring progress on a regular basis, concluding Accession Partnerships,