Suchergebnisse

On 1st May 2004, ten countries will have joined the European Union (EU): Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia. The presence of eight Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs hereafter) among the ten newcomers is particularly striking: these countries have had to make a giant step from centrally planned to market economies over an incredibly short time period. Accession to EU may thus be seen as a legitimate reward for countries which have undertaken a profound change in their political and economic structures. [First paragraph]

This paper assesses the consequences of EU enlargement for East West migration. In the theoretical part, we identify several factors in addition to the reduction of moving costs by which EU membership influences migration. Specifically, EU accession affects income gaps. Moreover, if EU membership is refused, fear of future restrictions on immigration will lead to increased current migration. Additionally, casual evidence from the 1980s EU South enlargement is examined. Since then no increases in migration flows from Spain, Portugal and Greece were observed. We conclude that granting EU accession to Eastern European countries will not necessarily induce massive East-West migration flows.

Explores the impact of the NATO enlargement of March 2004 on the reshaping of Europe's security landscape and formation of a new security identity, influenced by both old and new members. NATO's new security identity must grapple with three visible manifestations: autonomy from the United States, whether to apply force to new combat threats, and the role of Russia in European and global security.

The major issue in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has been the problem of enlargement of its full membership. Traditionally this issue is reviewed as a problem of practical policy. However as debates on the SCO membership enlargement progress, they go into more and more depth. This enlargement debate highlights political culture of SCO and also the issue, known in the experience of other international organizations, namely emerging different levels in an organization as membership grows. More importantly debates on enlargement stimulate thinking over the broader question on the future of the SCO - the global perspective (as Russia mostly prefers) or regional perspective (as China mostly prefers). Thus SCO encounters one of the most pressing dilemmas, that's collision of regionalization and globalization trends progressing in the modern world. Debates on these trends evolve in political, economic and social sciences and remain far from resolution. But the SCO is already under the pressure to make either a practical choice in favor of one of these trends or to find a reliable model to combine them within the SCO agenda. This article reviews the SCO enlargement problem not as an issue of practical policy, but as the issue of searching a balance between trends of globalization and regionalization, which if reached could help to reconcile Russian and Chinese interests in Eurasia.

[Conclusion]: .one must bear in mind that enlargement is an open process. Its obvious complexity is commensurate with the historical impact that it carries with it, as determining factor for the future of our Continent and for the role that the EU has to play in the international sphere. Turkey is already enjoying the recognized statute of candidate country and the benefits of pre-accession facilities. Furthermore, the latest invitations to participate in the European Conference, which is a forum of political dialogue, provide an indicative list of potential and foreseeable candidates. Together with the traditional ones, which are part of the European Free Trade Association, the European Council of Nice included the Balkan countries that is to say, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Albania. More recently, in Gottemburg, Moldavia and the Ukraine were also invited. The process of integration and extension and, ultimately, of strengthening of the EU against the background of globalization, does not seem to end with the fifth enlargement. Other countries of Europe may follow the road of the current 13 candidates, engaging in a process that will one day culminate in the reunion of the Continent as a whole, within a framework of freedom, democracy, human rights, prosperity, justice, stability and security, as common values shared, for the first time, by all Europeans.

Leading international economists assess the effects of the 2004 expansion of the European Union.In May 2004 the European Union will undergo the largest expansion in its history when ten countries--Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia--become members. The number of new members and their diversity make this "big bang" enlargement particularly challenging. Not only do these countries vary widely in language, culture, and geography, but also their per capita income is less than half that of existing members. EU officials believe that expanded integration will serve the EU's objectives of peace, stability, prosperity, and democracy; but the less abstract questions of costs and benefits of enlargement are more complex.Each of the chapters in this CESifo volume addresses a different aspect of EU expansion. The contributors, all leading international practitioners and scholars, consider such topics as the effect of euro zone expansion on European Central Bank monetary policy making; using the euro as an external anchor for a national currency; worker migration and income differentials; the Swiss experience with immigration policy in a direct democracy framework; detailed sector analysis using a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy; investment and job creation and destruction in incumbent member countries; and the asymmetric effects of enlargement on high- and low-income incumbent countries. Taken together, the chapters provide useful guidance in shaping the EU policies of the future.

NATO's enlargement into Central East Europe has been a lively debated topic for almost a decade. The highly variegated opinions and positions on this question in Europe and North America have ranged from angry denunciations, solid criticisms, serious doubts, guarded support to enthusiastic accolades. These contrasting attitudes underlined the flux and uncertainties as well as the divisibility of security in the post-Cold War era. Although Slovenia is viewed by a number of observers as a candidate in the best position to be invited by NATO at the next turn, this prospect remains uncertain. The key general problem lies in the large disparity between the desires of the remaining Central-East European candidates, including Slovenia, to join the alliance and NATO's willingness (and some members' clear unwillingness) to expand (it) further to the East and South-East. There is also a number of imponderables: the NATO-EU relations and the development of the European defense identity, the future of Russia; the international policies of the next US administration; the experience with the first Central East European round etc. (SOI : PM: S. 29)

The present article aims to explore the general theme of the EU enlargement strategy in the new 2012 European context. Until now, the EU's enlargement strategy has yielded impressive results. It succeeded in transforming ten central and eastern European countries from post-communism confusion into open-market, mature and effective systems of democratic governments, and even on the economic front, they have also made astonishing progress. It is no doubt that people in the new EU countries live better then before. In this context, the EU must continue the enlargement process to help stabilize the Balkan region that lie beyond its expanded eastern border. No one can deny that major issues concerning western Balkan countries' accession are still on the table, and they even exert a geopolitical influence of sorts. This makes it all the more important to see stability and regional co-operation there are strategically vital. An all-out effort must now be made to complete the enlargement process and ensure there is no strategic vacuum. This article provides the framework of analyses for the EU problems and the challenges for the Balkans governments as for Brussels.