ABSTRACT
This introduction presents some key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book exemplifies three suggested approaches to enlargement in a variety of ways. It traces longue duree developments of the policy and practice of enlargement, and its effect on the polity of the European Community/European Union (EC/EU). The book investigates enlargement Beyond the road to membership, and explores how issues of membership transform or persist within the community/union. It also explores the Entangled exchanges and synergies between the EC/EU and its surroundings, in order to break free of the still predominant progressivism and EU-centrism of the historiography. Antonio Varsori analyses the major phases of European enlargement by embedding the Southern and Central and Eastern European enlargements in their historical contexts. The book explains how the EC/EU has been connected, meditated and negotiated with its surroundings. Lise Rye explores the more benign interactions between the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the EC/EU.
