ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests three ways in which enlargement and foreign policy interact. First, enlargement may impact foreign policy. It may increase the capacity or international weight of the Union and alter its geopolitical orientation and, in turn, the dynamic of its key relationships. Second, the European Unions (EU's) foreign policy of integration, its way of relating to third countries through creating 'ever closer' institutionalised relationships, may promote a desire in those countries to accede to the EU, even if this was not part of the original objective on either side. And third, enlargement may itself become a foreign policy of the Union, a way of achieving its foreign policy objectives, especially those that relate to the security and stability of its neighbourhood. The enlargement to Spain and Portugal in 1986 also had a regional dynamic, emphasising the EEC's links with Latin America, although this had a less marked effect on the EEC's foreign policy than the 1973 enlargement.
