"The final stage of the EU accession game: The Baltic states - the likely victims of their own success?"

Vilpisauskas, Ramunas. (2003) "The final stage of the EU accession game: The Baltic states - the likely victims of their own success?". In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2003 (8th), March 27-29, 2003, pages 22, Nashville, TN.

Abstract

The paper focuses on a particular policy issue of European integration rather than a theoretical discourse. It presents the empirical data on the EU accession negotiations with the Baltic states -countries that have been relatively neglected in the literature on the accession of Central and Eastern European countries into the EU. It discusses the main features of accession negotiations, their recent results, likely effects on the ratification of the accession deal and possible further developments after the EU enlargement. Although the main focus is on the Baltic states, many of the observations could well be applied to the analysis of the other candidate CEECs' accession into the EU Although the European Commission continuously advocated the principle of differentiation of candidate countries, many features of the EU policy of enlargement as well as concrete negotiating demands have been of a horizontal nature and, therefore, were applied in the same manner to all candidate CEECs. Besides, looking into a group of three countries allows both to identify the factors that account for the divergences and similarities in the outcomes of negotiation.