ABSTRACT

Since the early 1990s Spanish representatives have emphasized the negative consequences that Eastward enlargement might have on the integration process, the common policies, the institutions and the EC budget. Moreover, their support for the process has not been unconditional, in the sense that it has not been just a ‘yes’, but rather a ‘yes . . . but’, with certain demands both on the EU’s enlargement policy and on other linked issues. Despite all this, successive governments never threatened to veto the accessions and kept on professing their solidarity with Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and confirming the moral duty to assist these countries in their process of socioeconomic and political transformation, regarding membership as the best means of achieving this goal and overcoming the division of the continent.