The Impacts And Future Of The European Union’s Enlargement

The European Union (EU), originated from the European Communities, is aregional economic and political union which has the strongest comprehensive strengthand the highest degree of integration in the world. However, Europe used to be thesource and the main battlefield of the two World Wars. The European people hadsuffered greatly from the wars. After World War II, a large number of people ofinsight began to rethink the future of Europe and put forward the proposals ofestablishing a union to transcend hostility and achieve lasting peace.Since the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community by France,Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg in1952, the EU has gonethrough six rounds of expansion and its member states have increased to27from theoriginal6countries. The enlargement can be broadly divided into two stages. Duringthe Cold War, the enlargement was mainly towards western and southern Europeancountries. It was after the Cold War that the large-scale expansion covered the centraland eastern European countries. The enlargement has made EU’s foreign policy morediversified, boosted the economy and intensified the political integration. Theenlargement also have the impact on the Euro-Russian and EU-US relations. Russiaremains quite vigilant against the EU enlargement, because it is anxious that itsformer allies will become the allies of the West. The attitude of the United Statestowards the enlargement is rather complex. On the one hand, it hopes that the force ofits allies could be stronger. On the other hand, the US is reluctant to see a powerfuland highly integrated EU challenging its international status. The door of the EU hasnot been closed, Turkey, Iceland and some Western Balkan countries are still on theirway to EU membership.Under the current circumstances of European sovereignty debt crisis, economicrecovery and growth is on the top of EU’s agenda. The EU needs time to digest theimplications of the recent two rounds of enlargement by carrying out further reform,improving the efficiency of its institutions and adjusting its policies. Furthermore, the candidate countries still have a long way to go before they meet the CopenhagenCriteria. Therefore, it is difficult to see a new round of EU enlargement in the nextfew years.