Starting in 1952 with Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Union (EU) successively enlarged to 27 member states in 2011. Since 2004, 10 Eastern European countries have joined the EU and, at the time of writing, five countries still have official EU candidate status and may join the EU in the near future. The permanent enlargement of the EU has led, and continues to lead, to social, cultural, economic, and linguistic pluralization and heterogenization and, more and more, causes a feeling of alienation among EU citizens. This comes along with a reduced willingness to share power, labor, and money among EU states, provokes tendencies of renationalization, and the resurgence of national thinking and acting. In the European common labor market these tendencies are attended by emerging exclusive nationalistic working climates and therefore undermine the formal freedom of movement for workers within the EU. In the European markets for consumer products (especially for food) these tendencies are reflected in augmented efforts that are undertaken to accentuate the national origin of domestic products. Empirical data of several EU member states will be analyzed and discussed. As a case study, the actual nationalistic tendencies of the Austrian consumer market will be parsed and integrated in a broader European picture. (author's abstract)

The EU is assumed to have a strong top-down transformative power over the states applying for membership. But despite intensive research on the EU membership conditionality, the transformative power of the EU in itself has been left curiously understudied. This thesis seeks to change that, and suggests a model based on relational power to analyse and understand how the transformative power is seemingly weaker in the Western Balkans than in Central and Eastern Europe. This thesis shows that the transformative power of the EU is not static but changes over time, based on the relationship between the EU and the applicant states, rather than on power resources. This relationship is affected by a number of factors derived from both the EU itself and on factors in the applicant states. As the relationship changes over time, countries and even issues, the transformative power changes with it. The EU is caught in a path dependent like pattern, defined by both previous commitments and the built up foreign policy role as a normative power, and on the nature of the decision making procedures. This path dependent pattern prevents the EU from actively using its strongest tools when trying to influence and steer the applicant states regarding reforms and norm transfer, effectively weakening the transformative power. Evidence from elections in Albania and Macedonia show how the domestic electoral stakeholders actively can resist, and even prune, important norms and laws, on best electoral practice, a key feature for the democratic structures required for EU membership. It is also apparent how there are few domestic change agent strong enough to actively promote normative changes, leaving much of the work for the EU. The clientelistic structures of these countries are a key aspect in shaping interests and actions of the political elite. The result is that layers of old and new institutions are created, producing the mixed pattern of reforms observed all over the Western Balkans. By combining the findings at both the EU level and in the applicant states, this thesis makes both important empirical and theoretical contributions, challenging some core aspects of the Europeanisation literature.

A l'approche de l'élargissement de l'UE de 2004, les Etats membres de l'Union européenne ont adopté des dispositions transitoires à la libre circulation des travailleurs, à savoir une période dérogatoire de sept ans durant laquelle ils pouvaient continuer à appliquer leur législation relative aux permis de travail. Initialement isolée, l'Allemagne est parvenue en quelques années à imposer sa préférence à ce sujet à l'ensemble de l'Union européenne. Cette thèse fait trois constats. Le premier est que si la libre circulation des travailleurs se situe à l'intersection des politiques d'élargissement, de marché du travail et de politique migratoire, c'est la composante migratoire qui a dominé la prise de décision. Plus précisément, les dispositions transitoires étaient perçues comme un outil de migration sélective afin de choisir les profils jugés comme étant les plus désirables - et ce même si les désirs politiques ne correspondaient pas à la réalité du marché. La seconde est qu'il n'y a eu que très peu d'Européanisation et d'harmonisation dans ce processus de décision, les Etats membres dominant les négociations. Enfin, le troisième constat est que les acteurs politiques ont principalement pris en compte des considérations électorales, et non des considérations économiques, dans l'adoption de ces dispositions transitoires. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This master thesis is devoted to the empirical analysis of the economic benefits of EU membership. The analysis aims to investigate what is the impact of EU membership on growth of the real GDP (in constant prices), unemployment rate and inflation rate for 16 states entering EU after the year 1995 (analysed period of years is 1991-2014). The applied method for evaluation in the current work is econometric analysis of panel data. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the literature review. The second part is describing data and variables that will be used for analysis, development of these variables over the time and stationary testing. The third part is dedicated to the regression analysis and includes models for GDP growth, unemployment growth and inflation. The last part of this master thesis will sum up the results and findings of previous parts. The main source for the data used in this work is the statistical database of World Bank (2016).

This research analyses the extent to which three newer (European Union) EU member states, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia have attempted and succeeded in shaping the development of the EU's energy security policy, focusing on natural gas. This explores the argument that EU membership affects the formation of national foreign and energy policy as well as procedures of policy-making, and that newer member states have also been able to shape EU level policy-making through the ‘uploading’ of national preferences. The research engages with relevant conceptual issues to develop and utilise a framework which is a synthesis of literature on EU agenda-setting, policy framing, Europeanisation and the social construction of energy ‘crises’ and (in)security. This conceptual frame is then used to explore and evaluate the influence of newer member states on EU energy policy agenda-setting, policy-making and policy implementation. Evaluating the obstacles and opportunities for influence, an empirically rich data set is analysed to test the extent to which five theoretically derived hypotheses account for member state influence. Five mechanisms are identified as potentially key factors in explaining the degree of influence which member states have. The thesis suggests that one is the impact of supply disruptions and price rises on perceptions and constructions of national and EU energy security. This can contribute towards a context that is conducive to the arguments about policy change and projection being made, a policy window, and is a reflection of the social construction of energy insecurity and energy crises. Diplomatic skill and learning to ‘play the EU game’, being active in Council summits and technocratic level(s), and engaging in consensual policy-making that adheres to EU norms and interests is seen as important. Another key factor is the role of Russia as a major and sometimes monopoly gas supplier, in constraining, enabling, and influencing the strength of national interests - the extent of political will and EU energy policy activism. A fourth factor is considered to be the extent to which institutionalised sub-EU regional and strategic alliances exist and are prioritised as an arena to develop coordinated policies and preferences. The final conceptually derived factor is related to the strength of administrative capacity, in terms of well-coordinated institutions at the national and EU level, and sufficient personnel and resources. The thesis also provides a study of the development of EU energy policy since the 1950s in chapter two, and chapters three to five focus on the three country case studies; Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia. These empirical chapters include in each case a history of their energy policy and relations with both the EU and Russia. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the empirical findings using comparative country case manner approach, along with conceptual (and methodological) observations based on the testing of the hypotheses.

This paper argues that the EU’s enlargement discourse can be understood as a form of political myth wherein a subject must align itself with an fantasmatic ideal type ofEuropean state. It works through positing a past from which the subject must advance, and a mythical horizon towards which the subject strives. The stage in between these temporal phases is understood as liminality, an ontological limbo of sorts. To illustrate how the political myth works, a discourse analysis is conducted by investigating reports by the UN and EU on the status of Kosovo’s alignment with ‘European standards’ and evaluations of the political situation. By applying the political discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, it was found that the image of the past in Kosovo was filled with symbols of ethnic conflict, clan affiliation andlingering communism, while the mythical horizon of European integration promised a utopian idea of multi-ethnicity, rule of law and freedom of movement. Kosovo in the process of integration is then stuck in a liminal phase between these temporal points, while the EU through a set of categorical measurements constructs not only Kosovo’s identity but also the ideal image of a European state and how to become one.

No / The Atlantic burden-sharing debate during the early part of the twenty-first century is shaping up to be very different from those of NATO's first fifty years. The resources needed for direct defence of western Europe have fallen sharply, and further cuts are possible. The gradual strengthening of European cooperation means that the EU is becoming an actor in its own right in many international regimes. Debates about which countries are pulling their weight internationally are also taking into account contributions to non-military international public goods¿financing EU enlargement, aiding the Third World, reducing emissions of climate-damaging pollutants. In this new multidimensional debate, it becomes more apparent that states that contribute more to one regime often do less than most in another. Germany, for example, is concerned about its excessive contribution to the costs of EU enlargement, but it spends considerably less than France and the UK on defence. European countries contribute three times as much as the United States to Third World aid, and will soon pay almost twice as much into the UN budget. Yet they were dependent on the US to provide most of the military forces in the 1999 Kosovo conflict, and would be even more dependent in the event of a future Gulf war. This widening of the burden-sharing debate contains both dangers and opportunities. It could lead to a fragmentation of the Atlantic dialogue, with each side talking past the other on an increasing number of issues, ranging from global warming to Balkan peacekeeping. In order to avoid such a dangerous situation, the US and European states should maintain the principle that all must make a contribution to efforts to tackle common problems, whether it be through troops in Kosovo or commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet there should also be some flexibility in defining who does how much. The preparedness of some countries to lead, by doing more, will be essential if international cooperation is to have a chance to work.

In October 1999 the European Commission published the second progress report on the state of convergence of the Central- and Eastern European candidate countries (CEECs). The report encompasses an assessment, which is based on the three Copenhagen criteria. From an economic point of view, a country must have a functioning market economy and be able to withstand the competition on the European single market. In this paper we present a synthetic performance measure which helps to assess the economic preparedness of the ten Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) to become members of the European Union (EU). With the aid of the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) we construct a best practice frontier, which is supported by the best performing EU-countries and which serves as a benchmark for the candidate countries. The preparedness of any CEEC is measured as the relative distance to this frontier. The results confirm that the macroeconomic performance of most of the CEECs lies far behind the EU standards, in foreign trade some of the CEECs already perform better than some EU countries. Interestingly, we find out that some CEECs are already better prepared for the EMU than many EU member states. (authors' abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

A phantom is haunting the EU enlargement process. Some fear that the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) effect might be a major obstacle for the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) to become members of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). A review of the relevant literature reveals that most estimations of the B-S effect in the EU acceding countries are flawed by one kind or the other. Either they do not estimate correctly the B-S propositions, or if they measure it they use a variety of measures for the variables needed. Additionally, the B-S effect is only a special case of a broader approach towards equilibrium real exchange rates. Lastly the B-S effect is studied in a CGE multi-country world in order to detect possible spillover effects. After describing the "official" road map towards the EMU, it is concluded that the uncertainties in measuring the B-S are much too high in order to see in it (alone) a major hindrance for the CEEC to become early members of the EMU. Moreover, real exchange rate appreciations that reflect productivity gains in the tradable sector are an equilibrium phenomenon and do not require a policy response. They are a natural phenomena in catching-up countries like the CEEC. Furthermore, the official doctrine for entering the EMU by the EU/ECB only interdicts depreciations but not appreciations for potential EMU members. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

The main aim of this thesis is to analyze EU-Western Balkans relations with regard to the prospective EU membership of the Western Balkans, and to make an analysis of the EU&rsquo / s Western Balkans enlargement strategy and the scope of membership conditionality imposed on the Western Balkans from post Dayton period (1995) to present (2006). This thesis examines how the EU membership conditionality worked in the Western Balkans&rsquo / preparatory stages for pre-accession, and to what extent it is different from the CEE enlargement process. Lastly, considering the discussions on rediscovered absorption capacity and the commitment of EU for further eastward enlargements after the CEE enlargement of 2004, it is looked into whether there has been a shift in EU&rsquo / s Western Balkans strategy. This thesis argues that the dominant factor determining the dynamics of the EU-Western Balkans relations are preferences, priorities and internal dynamics of the EU. The comparison between the CEE&rsquo / s and Western Balkans&rsquo / EU integration process reveals that EU tailored a long term and flexible enlargement strategy with increasing conditionality within SAP framework for the Western Balkans. Hence as long as the EU does not feel a sense of urgency straining the stability and EU integration of the region, a motivation for presenting an immediate enlargement platform will not emerge. In this sense, after the CEE enlargement, EU rediscovered its absorption capacity as a main membership condition and further differentiated the regional countries in terms of their own merits in fulfilling EU&rsquo / s conditionality and standards.