This volume suggests new, theoretically informed approaches for historians and social scientists to engage with the policy of enlargement – across rounds and in all its diversity. It follows three approaches: first tracing Longue Durée developments; second, investigating enlargement Beyond the Road to Membership; and third, exploring the Entangled Exchanges and synergies between the EC/EU and its outside. It attempts to properly historicise the process of enlargement with contributions from historians, social scientists and a legal scholar exemplifying suggested approaches and theoretical reflections from the various disciplines.

Enlargement has been an almost constant part of European integration history – going from an improvised exercise to the EU’s most developed foreign policy tool. However, neither the longevity nor the complexity of enlargement has been properly historicised. European Enlargement across Rounds and Beyond Borders offers three interdisciplinary, innovative, and indeed radical, new ways of understanding and analysing EC/EU enlargements: first, tracing Longue Durée developments; second, investigating enlargement Beyond the Road to Membership; and third, exploring the Entangled Exchanges and synergies between the EC/EU and its outside. This edited volume will provide fresh perspectives on enlargement as one of the defining processes in Europe in the second half of the 20th century: How are we to understand enlargement as a policy? How has it changed the EU? What is the historical role of the British press in shaping the UK’s visions of Europe? How has enlargement played into Russia’s relationship with today’s EU? Giving answers to these questions, and many more, this volume wishes to spark a broad debate about the roots, range, and repercussions of enlargement, and how historians, and other scholars, should engage with it. This publication will be of key interest to scholars and students of modern European history and politics, the European integration process, EU studies, and more broadly multilateral international institutions, history, law and the social sciences.

How did the world’s most warlike continent become its most peaceful one? Mehta argues that the process of political integration through the European Union has eliminated the reasons for conflict, and that this same model can be exported to Africa, The Americas, Asia, Australasia, and the Middle East and North Africa region, providing a promising glimpse of world peace.

The 2004 entry of 10 Central and Eastern European countries, along with Malta and Cyprus, into the EU has caused a huge shift in the EU's external boundaries. The socio-economic and political transformations that this shift has caused not only suggest new regional development opportunities, but also many potential problems and tensions. While the EU insists that enlargement will not signify 'new divisions', processes of inclusion and exclusion and the imposition of visa restrictions on non-EU citizens could pose obstacles to co-operation, conjuring fears of an emerging 'fortress Europe' that effectively divides the continent. Illustrated with case studies from Central and Eastern European border areas, this book examines capacities for region building across national borders in within the context of EU enlargement, synthesizing the various insights provided by local information and suggesting ways forward for the future development of the EU's 'Wider Europe' strategy.

Under the impact of accelerated globalization, transnational integration and international security concerns, the geopolitics of Europe's borders and border regions has become an area of critical interest. The progressive enlargement of the EU has positioned its borders at the heart of recent discussions on the changing nature of the EU, the meaning of 'Europe' and what constitutional shape a more politically unified Europe might take. With enlargement, the EU must elaborate strategies to contend with a fiercely competitive world - and to build fortress-like defences against perceived tensions arising from greater cultural mixing and threats such as terrorism. The authors build up an integral picture of the EU's internal and external borders and borderlands to reveal the processes of re-bordering and social change currently taking place in Europe. They explore issues such as security, immigration, economic development and changing social and political attitudes, as well as the EU's relations with the Islamic world and other world powers. The book embraces an array of disciplinary, ideological and theoretical perspectives, offering detailed case studies of different border regions and the concerns of the local inhabitants, while engaging in broader discussions of developments across Europe, state policies and the EU's relations with neighbouring states. Geopolitics of European Union Enlargement will be of key interest to students and researchers in the fields of European politics, geography, international studies, sociology and anthropology.

At the heart of the European integration process is the political economy debate over whether the EU should be a market-making project, or if it should combine this with integration in employment and social policy. What has been the impact of the 2004 and 2007 rounds of enlargement upon the political economy of European integration? EU enlargement, the clash of capitalisms and the European social dimension analyses the impact of the 2004 and 2007 enlargements upon the politics of European integration within EU employment and social policy. This book analyses the main policy negotiations in the field and analyses the political positions and contributions of the Central and Eastern European Member States. Through analyses of the negotiations of the Services Directive, the revision of the Working Time Directive and the Europe 2020 poverty target, the book argues that the addition of the Central and Eastern European states has strengthened liberal forces at the EU level and undermined integration with EU employment and social policy.