How Much Diversity Can the European Union Withstand? Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series Vol. 5 No. 30, August 2005

[Introduction]. The most recent, fifth enlargement bringing in ten new member states has been the largest and most challenging so far. It has led to an unprecedented import of political, economic and cultural diversity into the EU. Enlargement is the result of a long and complex accession process, during which the candidate states strove to meet the membership criteria while the Union aimed to improve its ability to absorb the new members. Despite this process of mutual adaptation, there is a lingering fear that the “new” members are not yet truly compatible with “old” members. But it is not only the import of diversity that is worrying some of the founding members of the EU. The depth and scope of the latest enlargement is likely to change the very nature of Europe and European integration. There has been growing skepticism within the Union about the ability of its institutions to cope with the challenges of such a large and increasingly diversified entity. It has been argued that a 25-member Union is likely to resemble a multi-functional, multi-layered, and highly diversified empire rather than a classical Westphalian state with clear borders, coherent institutional structure, and a single foreign policy (Zielonka 2001). For the time being though, there has been no radical rethinking of the institutions and structures of the Union. However, a Constitution for Europe has been drawn up which attempts to address some of the challenges facing European governance. Although its provisions are hardly revolutionary, it does provide a single text to replace all the complex existing treaties and it has more clearly defined the areas of Union competences. (1) This paper will analyze the most recent enlargement in terms of the welfare gaps between “old” and “new” member states, differences in democracy and political culture, as well as foreign policy and attitudes to the United States and Russia. It will then consider how this is likely to affect the functioning of EU institutions and structures. It will argue that to cope with such diversity, there needs to be a culture of accommodation and compromise and a degree of trust in European institutions. Are the new members, given their recent history, ready to act in this way? And are the old members ready to accept the changes an enlarged EU will inevitably bring with it

The EU's Next Big Enlargement: Empirical Data on the Candidates' Perceptions

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020

Public Attitudes towards the EU in Candidate Countries: Report of the working group on the Eastern Enlargment of the European Union

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020

Shaping the democratic order : The institutionalisation of parliament in poland

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Towards the completion of Europe. Analysis and perspectives of the new European Union enlargement.

This volume aims to contribute to the analysis of the EU in general and the background and consequences of its 2004 enlargement in particular. This enlargement is by far one of the greatest tests for the European Union and its institutions because the process of Europeanization is taking place in a variety of countries with diverse political cultures and dissimilar perceptions about the meaning and commitment to European integration. Given their differences in political and economic power, incumbent and new members are inevitably altering the functioning and character of the EU, a unique polity in the international system. Derived from this theoretical challenge, the chapters of this book suggest some explanations on six areas related to the 2004 enlargement: analytical approaches, citizens and identities, debates and regional transformations, external impacts, and the potential Turkey’s membership. The articles included in this publication are the result of the academic initiative of the Miami European Union Center, partnership formed by the University of Miami and Florida International University since 2000, which was also selected by the European Commission as one of the ten European Union Centers of Excellence in the United States for the period 2005|2008

Party government in Europe? Parliamentary and semi?presidential democracies compared

Control over government portfolios is the key to power over policy and patronage, and it is commonly understood to lie with parties in European democracies. However, since the democratic transitions of the 1990s, Europe has had nearly equal numbers of parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and there is evidence that the ability of parties to control government posts in these two regime types differs. As yet, political scientists have a limited understanding of the scale and causes of these differences. In this article a principal-agent theoretical explanation is proposed. Data are examined on 28 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies in Europe that shows that differences in party control over government portfolios cannot be understood without reference to the underlying principal-agent relationships between voters, elected politicians and governments that characterise Europe's semi-presidential and parliamentary regimes