"Enlarging the European Community/Union: National Preference Formation in the Member States"

Wennerlund, Kip. (1995) "Enlarging the European Community/Union: National Preference Formation in the Member States". In: UNSPECIFIED, Charleston, South Carolina. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the introduction]. With the ructions surrounding the passage of the Maastricht Treaty' receding into memory and the day of reckoning for Economic and Monetary Union likely no earlier than 1999, observers of the European Union (EU) are turning their attention to the coming battles over institutional reform in the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) set for 1996. High on the agenda of the IGC will be the institutional modifications necessary to fashion a viable Union enlarged beyond the present fifteen members. A Community built for six--and only modestly adjusted over the years--now entertains membership bids from its eastern European and Mediterranean neighbors and the likelihood of additional applicants from further afield. Many studies over the years have addressed the "widening" of the European Community, (2) an issue of integration nearly as perennial as the concern with "deepening." But these works usually focus on an individual episode of enlargement and deal with the issue from the perspective of the applicant country; that is, they tend to address the question of why a government decides to apply for membership. This paper takes that decision as given(3) and addresses instead the more difficult question of why the member state governments of the Community would open their club to new members. Any expansion of membership leads to a redistribution of the costs and benefits of membership among and within the existing member states. Governments-each of which holds a potential veto-must therefore decide whether to accept, and under what conditions, the relatively concentrated, short-run and certain costs that result from the trade, budgetary and institutional effects of enlargement in return for generally more dispersed, longer-run and less tangible benefits.

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