The primary purpose of this thesis is to investigate the operation of membership criteria, which are applied against countries that wish to join the European Union (EU). More specifically, the importance of some criteria in comparison to others is considered. To answer this proposal, three questions are posed: What are the EU membership criteria? Are some criteria more important than other criteria? Does the EU treat candidate countries differently in applying the membership criteria? Three countries are used in this analysis, each country representing one recent enlargement round: Poland (2004), Romania (2007), and current candidate country Turkey. Both official documents, such as EU treaties, and unofficial documents such as statements from EU leaders are used to analyze the application of membership criteria. The method that is used in this thesis is idea analysis. The EU has both official criteria, which are found in the foundation treaties, and unofficial criteria, which are the public and political opinions among the candidate countries and current EU member states. It is suggested that none of the criteria are more important than others; a candidate country must fulfill virtually all the official and unofficial criteria in order to gain EU membership. Although all criteria must be met, the application of the criteria is uneven between candidate countries. The EU does not treat countries differently when it comes to the official criteria. However, when it comes to the unofficial criteria, Turkey is treated differently from Romania and Poland. There is greater resistance to Turkey’s future membership, making it much more difficult for Turkey to reach the stage of full EU membership.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-6400 |
| Date | January 2010 |
| Creators | Brage, Mattias |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsvetenskaper, SV |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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