Progess in Preparing for EU Enlargement: The tensions between Economic and Political Integration

Together with Luciano Bardi and Martin Rhodes I organised a special monographic number of the International Political Science Review on EU enlargement. The three of us wrote the introduction ‘Enlarging the European Union: Challenges to and from Central and Eastern Europe’ summarising all the contributions (pp. 227-233). I also wrote a chapter on ‘Preparing for enlargement in the European Union: The tensions between economic and political integration’ pp.291-317. Abstract of the article Since 1989 an extremely rapid process of integration through the market has been taking place between the EU and Central and Eastern Europe. This operates through the three vehicles of integration: trade, foreign direct investment and outward-processing trade, and has been encouraged by trade concessions and the process of legal approximation. In contrast many the “political” questions relating to enlargement in areas such as the Common Agricultural Policy, the Structural Funds and Economic and Monetary Union still have not been resolved definitively. There remains a binomial asymmetry between the economic (market) and political aspects of integration.