Justifying the second enlargement: Promoting interests, consolidating democracy or returning to the roots?

As a historical case study concerned with a period now 30 years in the past, the second enlargement offers a window on European integration in a different, earlier phase than the other cases examined in this volume. The admission of Greece in 1981 is the sole example in the history of European integration to date of a single-country enlargement. The Greek case was also the first in which enlargement followed a democratic transition, providing an opportunity to explore the way in which the latter influenced the former.