The "new politics" of EU's eastern enlargement

Abstract

As many authors have said before, the fifth enlargement of the European Union has been "unlike any other". Keywords in this context have been the "sheer scale" of the process, the use of explicit membership criteria and a pre-accession process of "unprecedented length and complexity". I will argue that it additionally also showed "New Politics" with very distinct characteristics (as opposed to the "Old Politics" of Great-Power or "Hyper-power" Politics). In their own interest nation states have given up sovereignty (at least de-facto sovereignty) to a hitherto unseen extent. European Integration has progressed substantially into the area of "high politics", the acrimonious conflicts about the Iraq war non-withstanding. At times the Commission was a political player of great importance. And during most controversies the dividing lines ran across the member states (and the Commission). It is the aim of this paper to clarify some of these characteristics. I will deal only with the eastern enlargement, leaving the particular problems of Malta and Cyprus outside.