Group items tagged

Each wave of expansion of the European Union has led to political tensions and conflict. Existing members fear their membership privileges will diminish and candidates are loath to concede the expected benefits of membership. Despite these conflicts, enlargement has always succeeded - so why does the EU continue to admit new states even though current members might lose from their accession? Combining political economy logic with statistical and case study analyses, Christina J. Schneider argues that the dominant theories of EU enlargement ignore how EU members and applicant states negotiate the distribution of enlargement benefits and costs. She explains that EU enlargement happens despite distributional conflicts if the overall gains of enlargement are redistributed from the relative winners among existing members and applicants to the relative losers. If the overall gains from enlargement are sufficiently great, a redistribution of these gains will compensate losers, making enlargement attractive for all states.• Offers an in-depth overview of existing literature on EU integration and enlargement • Features past enlargements, the formal enlargement process, and other information relevant for EU enlargement • Includes a combination of different methods: game-theory, quantitative analysis and case studiesContents1. Introduction; 2. EU enlargements and transitional periods; 3. A rationalist puzzle of EU enlargement?; 4. A theory of discriminatory membership; 5. EU enlargement, distributional conflicts, and the demand for compensation; 6. The discriminatory of membership; 7. Discriminatory membership and intra-union redistribution; 8. Conclusion.

After a debate clouded by pessimism over where Europe's economy is heading and which other bitter surprises the global financial turmoil might still place in European laps, EU leaders meeting in Brussels have broadly agreed on the proposed economy stimulus package for the 27-strong bloc.

But both Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme and his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, confirmed that there was broad agreement around the negotiating table about both the proposed level of pump-priming - 1.5 percent of the EU's GDP - and most of the other proposals from the EU executive on how to invest extra monies.

EU officials on Wednesday hailed Bosnia's adoption of long-disputed police reforms, saying it opened the way for the Baltic state to sign the first accord on the way to European Union membership. "I welcome the final adoption of the police reform laws, which paves the way towards signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA)," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement. The SAA trade and aid pact "will not only bring practical benefits in trade and thus for the economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it is also the gateway towards candidate country status for EU accession," Rehn added.

Earlier Wednesday lawmakers in Bosnia's upper house definitively adopted the police reforms, removing the last hurdle for the country to sign the key pact on closer EU ties. Two police reform bills passed by 10 to four votes, ending years of dispute among Bosnia's Croat, Muslim and Serb leaders about the extent to which they should integrate the country's separate ethnic police forces. The lower house of the Bosnian parliament approved the reforms last week.

EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss the best ways to get out of the economic crisis. But despite some calls to spend more to support the bloc's ailing economies, most of the attention is expected to be focused on the need for better regulation of the financial sector and on "fine-tuning" the existing European economic stimulus package.

In the face of the persisting economic turmoil, France and Germany's leaders sent a letter to the Czech EU presidency and to the president of the European Commission on Tuesday reiterating what they see as an urgent need to reform the financial system. "The top priority is building up the new global financial architecture. The European Union must affirm a common position and take the lead in this process," French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote.

Central and eastern European countries have called for solidarity among member states, as several western states look to national solutions to get themselves out of the current economic crisis. The gathering of nine member states, who all joined the bloc after 2004, also offered their public support to the European Commission to uphold the principles of the internal market and fight against protectionism.

The newer member states have been alarmed by signs that richer member states intend to try and buy their way out of the crisis, an option not open to central and eastern countries. They have been calling for an EU response as a way of avoiding this trend, which could lead to a run towards economic nationalism.

The Wall that represented the geographical and political division of Europe was taken down 20 years ago, bringing euphoric hopes of unity. Yet today there is a new division in Europe - a solidarity gap.

The Russian-Ukrainian dispute became the opening act of the East-West drama that called into question the EU's credibility among its new members. The lack of long-term support on the part of the European Commission for the integration of Europe's gas transmission systems and the initial reluctance of key European leaders such as Sarkozy, Merkel or Berlusconi to enter the fray resulted in a 14-day stalemate for a number of recently-admitted EU members. One immediate result was that previously high levels of support for the union fell by nearly 20% in Bulgaria during the weeks of the crisis. Last week, fresh news of Ukraine firm Naftagoz' inability to pay Gazprom has conjured the spectre of a new gas crisis, raising new fears in EU's East.

Meanwhile, the protectionist statements by French President Nicolas Sarkozy amid the growing financial difficulties of the new member states became an alarming signal for the prospects for their economies. With their banks owned mostly by West European banking institutions and their financial balances highly dependent on foreign direct investment from the established industrial countries, the new member states face the risk of financial turmoil in the months to come.

According to the Eurostat scoreboard - based on 2006 figures - there are ocean wide gaps between EU member states when it comes to the purchasing power of their citizens. The figures vary from 37 to 280 percent of the EU-27 average.

Ten years after the original 11 countries in western Europe set up a common currency, the monetary union is due to enlarge to Slovakia, as its 16th member state and the first in central Europe to switch to the euro.

"The Slovak economy was able to fulfil al the conditions required to join the euro less than five years after the country entered the EU and this had required a political will and a very dynamic economy. Now it's the time to reap the benefits of sharing the same currency," with 325 million Europeans in the 15-strong eurozone.

The EU stated that «the future of the Western Balkans rests within the European Union». On an economic level, however, the establishment of a market economy and the capability to stand the competition in the single market have been formulated as prerequisites for an EU-accession. As the contributions to this book from experts of the region demonstrate, strategies to create the demanded competitive structures in the countries of the Western Balkans vary, depending on the different stages of development, inherited economic structures and the previous transition and integration process. In this context, the articles mainly concentrate on the actual economic development, trade performance, the attraction of FDI and endogenous determinants of competitiveness as education and innovation in the analysed economies. This book follows the first compendium on the region edited by S. Kusic. «Path-Dependent Development in the Western Balkans - The Impact of Privatization», published 2005 by Peter Lang.