ABSTRACT
Chapters 4 and 5 examined how Bulgaria and Romania managed to normalise their relations with the EC (its institutions and its member states) and eventually secured approval to begin Association negotiations in May 1992. The Bulgarian and Romanian Association game was the second in the sequence of a series of Association games played between the EC and the CEECs during the period 1991-1995. As such, the Bulgarian and Romanian game was very much dependent on the results of the first wave of Association agreements with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The importance of the precedent set with the Visegrad EAs was already known to all sides as early as 1990, since the Commission had proposed that the basic framework of the Association agreements as well as the main principles of trade liberalisation should remain the same for all applicants.
