Beyond Models and Regulations: Eastward Expansion versus Retrenchment in the ‘New’ EU?

The European Union’s New Year 2007 admission of Romania and Bulgaria, and the several months’ run-up to it, had, atmospherically and administratively, a different feel from the earlier 2004 expansion that had included eight ex-communist states. It took place in an EU whose bureaucratic confidence was badly shaken by the failure of critical ‘old Europe’ states to ratify the Constitution. The two Balkan countries, in a sense, represented unfinished or deferred business from 2004: not admitted at that time, as Brussels drew an implicit distinction between East Central Europe and the Balkans, which were given a `delay’ that amounted to a promise of admission in 2007, ‘unless…’. The discipline imposed on their further clean-up prior to entry was not all that onerous. In 2005 and 2006, warnings about corruption and flawed justice systems, surprisingly more focused on Bulgarian backsliding than Romanian, were issued, but these remained only warnings. There was no real opposition mobilized to their entry, but, at the end, there was no real enthusiasm in Brussels either. The principle ‘better (to have them, whatever the problems) in, than out’ that had guided the EU in the 2004 expansion as well, although with less agonizing, was applied again.