L'élargissement de l'Union européenne et la divergence entre économies en transition

The paper builds upon two lessons of the recent experience with transition in Eastern Europe. First, the development of reforms has witnessed increasing divergences between economies, especially since industrial production has started to pick up, at least in some on them. This partly reflects the uneven capacity to impose harder financial constraints as well as a strong contractual and legal regulation of economic transactions. Second, the capacity to absorb foreign economic assistance appears to be strongly linked with the capacity to restructure the domestic economy : the less an economy requires aid, the most efficient it is in using it. Conversely, the main causes for a difficult, or chaotic transition, as seen in the Balkan or in the former Soviet Union, appear to be largely out of reach of foreign assistance. This leads to the proposition that a stepwise enlargement of the EU towards the East, which would give priority to the most sucessfull countries, could further accentuate the divergences within Eastern Europe : as in the case of the European Monetary Union, the « ins » could end up crowding out dangerously the « outs ». Eight reasons for such adverse effects are put forwards.