This book's principal aim is to critically address the institutional and substantive legal issues resulting from European enlargement, chiefly those relating to the legal foundations on which the enlarged Union is being built. The accession of new Member States creates the potential for a stronger and more powerful Europe. Realising this potential, however, will depend on the ability of the EU to develop functional and effective governance structures, both at the European level and at the level of the individual Member States. While the acquis communautaire will ensure that formal laws in the new Member States will be aligned with those of existing members, the question remains as to how effective institutions will be in implementing changes, and what effects the imposed changes will have on the legitimacy of the new legal framework. This book, containing the work of leading scholars in law and social sciences, examines the current and future legal framework for EU governance, and the role that new members will - or will not - play in the creation of that framework, paying particular attention to the specific challenges membership in the EU poses to the acceding states of Central and Eastern Europe. It is a book which will contribute to and influence debates over constitutionalism and legal harmonisation in the EU.

This book offers a strikingly new perspective on EU enlargement. Basing his findings on substantial empirical evidence, Zielonka presents a carefully argued account of the kind of political entity the European Union is becoming, with particular reference to recent enlargement.

The European Union will be a much more diversified entity after the forthcoming eastward enlargement. The applicant states from Eastern Europe are much poorer than the current member states from Western Europe. Their democracy and in some cases even their statehood is newly established and presumably more fragile. Their economic, legal and administrative structures are less developed. This collection of essays will try to examine the origin, nature, scale and implications of this divergence. How much divergence is likely to be imported by the Union and will it hamper the process of European integration? This volume looks at differences and similarities in the field of macro-economics, welfare systems, democracy, institutional infrastructure, civic orientations and popular culture. The book shows that the map of convergence and divergence in the future EU will be very complex and will not correspond exactly with the old east-west divide. Moreover, the division lines are constantly changing with the enlargement process representing an important factor pushing individual states into a single regulatory frame, if not in a common political direction. However, there are other "unifying" factors at play: globalization produces different models and loyalties than Europeanization. Moreover, the European pulling effect works unevenly in different functional fields and in different countries. There are also many factors that produce greater divergence rather than convergence across the European Union; a certain degree of divergence is thus unavoidable. The book shows, in particular, that certain types of divergence can be beneficial rather than merely detrimental in the process of Europeanintegration.

In this set of interdisciplinary essays leading scholars discuss the future of the Rule of Law, a concept whose meaning and import has become ever more topical and elusive. Historically the term denoted the idea of 'government limited by law'. It has also come to be equated, more broadly, with certain goods suggested by the idea of legality as such, including the preservation of human dignity and other individual and social benefits predicated upon or conducive to a rule-based social order. But in both its narrow and broader senses the Rule of Law remains a much contested concept. These essays seek to capture the main areas and levels of controversy by 'relocating' the Rule of Law not just at the philosophical level, but also in its main contemporary arenas of application - both national, and increasingly, supranational and international.

The emergence, execution and evolution of new modes of governance across several policy fields - and encompassing all three pillars of the European Union - are mapped, analyzed and evaluated. In particular, the expert contributors focus on the ways in which these innovative mechanisms and practices interrelate, how they relate to ?old' methods of governance, and what their implications are both for the effectiveness and efficiency of policymaking. Conclusions are drawn in the form of an integrated new framework that explains the dynamics of EU governance with an ?integrative spiral' driven by the interrelation between the legal and the living architecture of the EU. Linking research on modes of governance to the analysis of the basic legal, institutional and procedural features of the EU up to the Lisbon Treaty, this book will prove essential reading for scholars, researchers and policy makers in the fields of European studies, law and economics, and political science and theory.

For years the European Union has been looked on as a potential model for cosmopolitan governance, and enjoyed considerable influence on the global stage. The EU has a uniquely strong and legally binding mission statement to pursue international relations on a multilateral basis, founded on the progressive development of international law. The political vision was for the EU to export its values of the rule of law and sophisticated governance mechanisms to the international sphere. Globalization and the financial crisis have starkly illustrated the limits of this vision, and the EU's dependence on global forces partially beyond the control of traditional provinces of law. This book takes stock of the EU's role in global governance. It asks: to what extent can and does the EU shape and influence the on-going re-ordering of legal processes, principles, and institutions of global governance, in line with its optimistic mission statement? With this ambitious remit it covers the legal-institutional and substantive aspects of global security, trade, environmental, financial, and social governance. Across these topics 23 contributors have taken the central question of the extent of the EU's influence on global governance, providing a broad view across the key areas as well as a detailed analysis of each. Through comparison and direct engagement with each other, the different chapters provide a distinctive contribution to legal scholarship on global governance, from a European perspective.

This book's principal aim is to critically address the institutional and substantive legal issues resulting from European enlargement, chiefly those relating to the legal foundations on which the enlarged Union is being built. The accession of new Member States creates the potential for a stronger and more powerful Europe. Realising this potential, however, will depend on the ability of the EU to develop functional and effective governance structures, both at the European level and at the level of the individual Member States. While the acquis communautaire will ensure that formal laws in the new Member States will be aligned with those of existing members, the question remains as to how effective institutions will be in implementing changes, and what effects the imposed changes will have on the legitimacy of the new legal framework. This book, containing the work of leading scholars in law and social sciences, examines the current and future legal framework for EU governance, and the role that new members will - or will not - play in the creation of that framework, paying particular attention to the specific challenges membership in the EU poses to the acceding states of Central and Eastern Europe. It is a book which will contribute to and influence debates over constitutionalism and legal harmonisation in the EU.