Excerpt from:
‘What are the Implications of Changing External Borders
for EU Foreign Policy’
‘Enlargement’ constitutes the EU’s strongest
foreign policy instrument to influence its own region. It
effectively represents a new lease of life for the legitimacy
of European foreign policy, especially after its failures
in South-Eastern Europe in the 1990s when it became resigned
to the fact that it had to remain heavily reliant on the United
States. Enlargement, on the other hand, is one area where
the EU can exercise real power; in fact, “the US cannot
boast that any country has complied with its laws and served
its interests as assiduously as the candidates have sought
to please the EU” (Grabbe, 2002, 1). The membership
perspective remains an insuperable foreign policy tool to
stabilise the region, influence dependant on the power of
attraction and association with it – as opposed to any
‘hard’ foreign policy instruments (carrots rather
than sticks) – to impose conditionality through linking
reforms with benefits. This is allowing the EU to influence
developments by extending its zone of economic prosperity
and the ‘democratic peace’ to prevent war, nationalism
and autocracy (Hill, 2000, 3) with limited means. This has
not only contributed to the stability to the region, but also
to the legitimacy and clout of the EU’s foreign policy.
Notwithstanding the fact that enlargement has offered the
EU an unparalleled opportunity to influence developments in
its own region, the process of widening also introduces a
multitude of related questions and issues, both internal and
external to the EU. Advancing from the process and prospect
of enlargement to actual enlargement, the impact on the functioning
and focus of EU foreign policy will not be insignificant.
The reason for this is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative
issues. The most obvious and straightforward consequence is
the fact that the inclusion of ten states with their own foreign
policy preferences and agendas will place a considerable burden
on the efficiency of the EU institutions. Currently, “the
Union is a collection of still largely sovereign states with
largely diverging agendas, and the Union’s decision-making
process is still largely based on intergovernmental bargaining”
(Zielonka, 1998, 139). The CFSP decision-making process is
often slow, conflict-ridden and subject to the lowest common
denominator and, therefore, the strategic grounds of decisions
can often be questionable. This will most likely be even more
problematic if unanimity is sought between an even greater
number of states, where the ceiling for unanimity will be
lowered even further; and, that is assuming that institutional
gridlock can be avoided.
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