No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>For a long time Iceland, the Nordic and the EFTA countries had a skeptical attitude against the EU, even if their economic interests was in favour to join EU. The study use rationalist’s approaches to explain the willingness of these states movement to the European integrate. This thesis seeks to analyze the Icelandic way to the EU membership application, by describing earlier Nordic and EFTA member states reorientations to the EU membership. The similar experiences from Sweden, Finland and Norway compare the Icelandic case. The used method is qualitative studies of literature and the main material is overarching policy documents from the government of Iceland.</p><p>To conclude the study, all countries experience security, political and economic difficulties to join an integration system. After the serious damages from the global financial crisis 2008, Iceland expected higher economic benefits. Iceland understood, it could for the future secure its economical interests by joining the EU. Iceland became less stubborn toward EU and one effect of this kindness was to act rational by launching out its eagerly awaited EU membership application.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: EU, EFTA, Iceland, enlargement, European policy, Global financial crisis</strong></p>

The European Union has long established itself as the world's most powerful regional supranational formation, which is achieved thanks to its economic results, geopolitical influence, and military might. European integration offers countries with an opportunity to boost their development and have greater impact in the international arena. However, the EU accession criteria are quite hard to meet, and many countries face significant difficulties in this respect, which is the case of Turkey. Since 1987, when Turkey officially applied for membership in the EU, the country hasn't completed its integration in the European community yet. This thesis investigates the main economic advantages and disadvantages in the context of Turkey's prospective accession to the European Union as a full-fledged member state.

In the period of post-Cold War, regional integration is one of the most important trend of international politics, European Union (EU) is the most successful example at present. The EU enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries is a new challenge for itself to run the regional organization. The old EU members would conflict with new EU members for their own advantages. Central and Eastern European countries have broken away from Russia¡¦s control, and expect its modernization will be enhanced by accession to the EU, but the conditions of EU in the area of politics and economy must be reached by Central and Eastern European countries. In this thesis the EU enlargement will be analyzed by Neo-functionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism.

<p>In this paper corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been studied to investigate to what extent corruption inhibits Bosnia and Herzegovina’s possibilities of integrating with EU.</p><p>The overarching research question is how occurrence of various types and forms of corruption affect the possibilities of Bosnia and Herzegovina to fulfill the criteria negotiated by the EU. In order to undertake this exploration the study uses typologies to identify and categorize the various forms of corruption that exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and theories about the impact of these forms of corruption. After that these forms of corruption are analyzed in relation to their impact on the various political and economic criteria that are set for integration and membership in EU, such as independent justice system and the acceleration of the privatization process.</p><p>The results show that corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina represents a major obstacle to several of the criteria set by the EU and thereby integration with EU. Even though that these priorities are told to be set with realistic goals these priorities will be difficult to fulfill with such widespread corruption as in Bosnia and Herzegovina today.</p>

When Turkey became a candidate of the EU in 1999 it had been a problematic applicant for forty years due to residual unpopularity with several member states for cultural, economic, security and normative reasons. However, the Helsinki European Council heralded a change of fortunes for Ankara and by 2005 accession negotiations had opened. This happened in spite of Turkey remaining an unpopular candidate with some member states. Moreover, since 2005, Turkey s standing within the EU has returned to a position akin to its pre-1999 stasis. This thesis thus asks: why did Turkey make such progress between 1999 and 2004/5? What was the specific configuration of structures, processes and actions that enabled that to happen then but not before or after? The thesis approaches this puzzle using a stretched eclectic version of Historical Institutionalism which can incorporate the effects of both structure and agency. In this way it can include the influence of wider structural factors, such as CEEC enlargement, Cyprus and ESDP as well as the agency of Turkey s advocates within the EU. It is a detailed qualitative process-tracing study which uses semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence to make a case for a given explanation. It concludes that a path dependent process, influenced by both structure and agency, can be traced from the Helsinki European Council to that in Brussels five years later which rhetorically entrapped the member states into agreeing to open accession negotiations in spite of Turkey s underlying unpopularity. By adopting this framework for analysis, the thesis makes a contribution to the literature on the Turkey-EU accession process by viewing the time period as a whole and taking a temporal rather than a snapshot approach. In so doing it is possible to explain why and how Turkey was able to make such progress between 1999 and 2004. It is also valuable in the study of present Turkey-EU relations as the ultimate conclusion has to be that there was a unique window of opportunity for both Turkey and the EU during this time and the window may now have closed.

The eastward enlargement of the European Union will be the fifth enlargement since establishing the European Community in 1957. This paper gives an overview of the most recent undertakings to estimate the costs and benefits of EU enlargement in the framework of model analysis. This field of research is relatively young. Therefore only a few model simulations have been made so far. They can be classified into world models covering several world regions, and in single country models. In both cases, one finds computable general equilibrium - CGE - models as well as macro models. The major findings of world models are that the CE-ECs will be the winners whereas the EU incumbents can expect only small gains from enlargement. Taking into account the costs of enlargement the big question, is how the int e-gration gains are distributed among EU incumbents. As a rule, those countries will benefit the most which have already strong trade relations with the CEECs. In the case of the single country models, Austria is one of those countries with the longest tradition in making model simulations in the case of enlargement. A comparison of CGE model approaches with macro model simulations for Austria shows that the benefits of EU enlargement may be lower than those of the opening-up of Eastern Europe since 1989. (author's abstract) / Series: EI Working Papers / Europainstitut

Legal aspects of the accession of Croatia to the European Union Abstract The EU enlargement policy is a fundamental instrument of the EU's foreign and security policy that enables Union to achieve its goals such as creating a common area of peace, stability and prosperity. Since the Western Balkans has experienced an armed conflict in the recent past and since these countries are direct neighbors of the European Union, the Balkan region represents an essentially important area in the strategic plans of the EU. The European Union as well as the Western Balkans' countries strives for the full integration into the European structures. In the context of the ongoing post-war reconstruction in the region Croatia's accession into the EU represents a significant historical moment. Croatia has already passed through the whole accession process and can act as a model example for other Balkan countries. In this thesis author mainly aims to map in detail the course of the accession process in general and understand the specifics of the Croatian accession in the context of the European policy towards Western Balkans. Although the EU has set down the accession criteria and procedural rules, accession process of every candidate state is different and depends on the actual situation of the country in question. This thesis...