ABSTRACT
Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were the first group of countries to begin association negotiations with the EC in February 1991, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in May 1992. Subsequently, the EC negotiated association agreements with the successor republics of the former Czechoslovakia in 1993, the Baltic states in 1994 and Slovenia in 1995. Despite the initial optimism surrounding the launch of the association process, however, the EA negotiations soon evolved into a rather turbulent process, tarnished by delays, quarrels and disillusionment, particularly as the EC often failed to match the expectations that the East European applicants had attached to the association agreements. The EC’s cautious offers to the association applicants has been one of the most striking features of the association negotiations as they not only contradicted the earlier EC pledges for economic assistance for the new democracies in Eastern Europe, but were also disproportionate to the relatively small economic threat posed by the association applicants whose combined share of the EC’s total external trade in 1990 was just 2.37 per cent (European Commission 1994:545).
