Europäische Union: Erweiterung cum Vertiefung? Erweiterung versus Vertiefung! / European Union: Enlarging cum Deepening? Enlarging versus Deepening!

The EU policy of enlargement through the accession of new members while at the same time persuing the institutional deepening of the Union will prove unsustainable if and because, in the trade-off between the costs and benefits of expanding integration areas, the rising costs of heterogeneity exceed the economies of scale generated by enlargement. A deepening strategy in the sense of the centralisation and harmonisation of an increasing number of policy fields, together with the extension of powers granted to the Community institutions that is inherent in such a policy, raises the heterogeneity costs of enlargement. Yet these costs must be lowered so that in spite, or because, of the EU`s inclination towards further enlargement the economies of scale gained by enlargement may dominate. However, this means counteracting the extension of Community institutions` activities into fields of policy, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle, are a matter of national or regional responsibility. With every round of enlargement, the EU would then grow closer to an endogenously self-decentralising integration area and develop towards a structure of competing overlapping jurisdictions that reduce the heterogeneity costs caused by enlargement because they have a high level of proximity to citizens` preferences. Accordingly, every enlargement would mean the EU moving further away from the finality of a more rather than less centralised construction. There seems to be an inherent tendency to focus more and more on the wealth-increasing effects attributable to the free trade area of the Internal Market.