The compromises involved in the EU’s eastern enlargement and the quality of the result: implications for the western Balkans?

Abstract

There is a growing volume of literature on the EU’s enlargement towards the eastern part of the continent which, from the perspective of the SEER Journal, is gaining increasing importance as the EU now seeks, once again, to re-orient itself towards the countries of the western Balkans. Interest in the literature is growing not only because the results have been ambiguous but also because the nature of the process itself remains largely unexplained. This article seeks to reconstruct the concept of eastern enlargement, taking account of the reality of the national interests and compromises that shaped its direction and that of the wider notion of European integration. It draws on the belief that enlargement conditionality has been represented as having inevitable validity, thereby allowing a revision of the understanding of the role, importance and limits of that validity. The author concludes that an accelerated enlargement process has had a knock-on impact on the quality of integration itself; and that the reality of national interests has pre-determined an unfinished character to the process of Europeanisation.