ABSTRACT
Up to the early 1980s, it is probably fair to say that the issue of enlarging the European Union (EU) came to prominence only at times when the Union was actually busy absorbing new members, notably when the original six became ‘the Nine’ and when the Nine then incorporated the three Mediterranean states of Greece, Spain and Portugal to become the present EU of twelve. This ‘widening’ of the EU has always been, of course, of importance to its development in the sense that membership of the club was being increased, but during its early development most of the attention of the EU was probably concentrated on ‘deepening’ the Union; i.e., completing the customs union and the common market, developing common policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and regional policy and generally promoting economic convergence and monetary and political integration among the existing members.
