From Nation-States to Member States: Accession Negotiations as an Instrument of Europeanization

Abstract

This paper analyzes recent accession negotiations to evaluate pressures for ‘Europeanization' upon countries seeking to join the European Union (EU). Despite the European Commission's policy of evaluating applications for membership on a country-by-country basis, the paper finds that accession negotiations followed an unexpectedly uniform process, whereby a similar sequence of policy areas were opened for evaluation and closed across diverse countries that had, in some cases, initiated their applications at different times. Using data from the EU's regular reports on progress towards accession, the paper compares and analyzes patterns of negotiations with the European Commission, contrasting the sequence of openings and closings of chapters of the acquis communautaire, the duration of negotiations for each chapter, and patterns of transition periods. Second, the paper finds that applicant countries have made substantial and similar adaptations of policies and institutions to comply with the EU's requirement that they adopt the acquis. The paper compares adaptations for the chapter on regional policy to highlight an arena in which the demands for institutional and policy adaptation are high and conditionality is especially powerful due to prospective EU funds associated with this chapter. The paper raises questions about whether changes in new member states can be considered to be deep or long-lasting and considers the future prospects for Europeanization.