ABSTRACT
Introduction A significant transformation has taken place in Europe since the late 1980s when the EU was still emerging from its internal difficulties of Eurosclerosis and the ‘iron curtain’ was firmly in place across the continent. However, with the EU pursuing the single internal market programme and monetary union, the collapse of Communism triggered both an economic and political transformation that swept across CEECs and ultimately led to the clamour for EU membership. At the commencement of this process Redmond (1994) forwarded three reasons regarding the transformation of the EU into the leading economic and political force within Europe. First, the EU’s position as the major player in Europe was firmly established following the resolution of the internal budgetary and agricultural disputes with non-EU countries having to re-evaluate their relationship to ensure market access such that the costs of non-membership were raised to unacceptable levels. Hence, the long-term option to resolve this dilemma became the seeking of EU membership as it appeared the only viable ‘club’ in Europe with the EFTA reduced to a rump of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Second, the momentous changes in the CEECs have transformed the economic and political landscape of the Continent with a range of new possibilities and scenarios opening up. In particular, the previously unimaginable prospect of EU membership became the goal of many countries that did not even exist as sovereign nations 20 years ago. Finally, the increasing globalization of world commerce has illustrated the importance of the EU as a regional trade bloc alongside those of NAFTA, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Cairns Group and Mercosur to name but a few. Its fifth enlargement increased the EU’s membership to 25 on 1 May 2004 with ten of the 12 ACs being CEECs. A further enlargement in 2007incorporated Bulgaria and Romania, whilst in its second annual Stabilization and Association Process report, released in March 2003, the commission indicated that the enlargement process would extend to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia-Montenegro. However, although this enlargement process is unprecedented in terms of the number of countries, it is less so in terms of more important features such as population and economic status (Gross, 2002).
