European Forum

EU Enlargement: Lessons Learned

Wednesday, 7th September was the kick off of the Copenhagen Revisited Project by Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and the European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity, with the support of the Dutch foundations Wiardi Beckman Stichting and Alfred Mozer Stichting. The objective of this project is to critically assess the EU enlargement process of South East European (SEE) countries and Turkey. The first activity in this framework was a seminar in Brussels 'EU Enlargement: Lessons Learned' with distinguished speakers and participants from the EU, CEE and SEE countries and Turkey and focused on the lessons learned from previous enlargement rounds.

Amongst other findings, the necessity of both strong accession and post-accession strategies was particularly highlighted. Both the positive and negative points of the recent enlargements were discussed. The increased trade among new member states and their strong advocacy for further enlargement towards the Western Balkans were mentioned as two positive points. A special emphasis was put on the fact that in some countries citizens’ interests were better met by the EU and this has created a crucial pressure on governments, for example on fighting corruption or organized crime. Amongst the negative points, the weak implementation capacity of the new Member States was principally pointed out. Following the seminar a special panel was assigned to talk about the difficulties concerning the situation of Roma in the region.

The full report will be available soon. All these discussions will become an integral part of the book published at the end of the project in June 2012.