Abstract

This chapter adopts both a historical and a comparative approach in studying EU enlargement. The aim here is to identify ‘whether' and ‘when' a country joins the Union, with an emphasis on the currently ongoing enlargement process in the Western Balkans. It starts with an overview of the conceptual and theoretical framework for studying and explaining EU enlargement. It then reviews how EU enlargement has proceeded over time by looking at its successful and unsuccessful cases, with a particular focus on the motivations and explanations associated with each of them. The chapter considers the successful rounds of enlargement, the reluctant and the awkward cases, and the ongoing (laggard) Southeastern Enlargement round. It discusses the main EU enlargement dilemmas and their implications for the current (unfinished) enlargement round in the Western Balkans in detail.

Highlights

  • Since the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC), there have been several rounds of European Union (EU) enlargement

  • After the Eastern ‘Big Bang’, EU enlargement entered a phase of greater fatigue and crises, which slowed down the process and largely put into question the EU capabilities to further enlarge (Sekulić, 2020)

  • The ‘enlargement fatigue’ (EU incapability) within the European Union has brought about its concomitant malady within the Western Balkans in an ‘accession fatigue’ of reforms being either stalled or having gone into reverse in many countries and sectors (O’Brennan, 2014, p. 234)

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Summary

Introduction

Since the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC), there have been several rounds of European Union (EU) enlargement. The security-geopolitical concerns, economic incentives, and normative-identity claims are important explanatory factors to understand the motivations associated with the question of ‘why’ enlargement should take place, but they cannot explain the time when accession membership happens.

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Conclusion

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