Enlargement: Not Enough Support for the New Members

There is no doubt that the 2004 enlargement was justified by a number of very good reasons: (1) the intention to take up the original European agenda to unite the countries for a more peaceful and prosperous future; (2) the ambition to create a large and powerful economic area able to compete with the United States in economic terms; (3) the will to balance the increasing hegemonic behaviour of the United States by a second superpower; (4) the hope that integration of eastern European countries would make it very difficult for a further ‘Yugoslavia’ to occur, that is another regional war among former Soviet-dominated states and neighbouring countries in Europe. On the other hand in the accession countries the issue of EU membership was associated with contradictory and vague expectations, with fear and hope. But the specific constellation of economic, political and ideological powers during the accession years resulted in an institutional framework conducive to a suboptimal development in the CEECs. It will be argued that the economic evolution in the former socialist countries2 exhibits a number of severe deficits which partly have their origin in EU policies.