The political economy of accession: forming economically viable Member States

This chapter considers the economic dimension of the enlargement process. The Copenhagen criteria require that before a country becomes a member of the EU it must have a ‘functioning market economy’. However, the European Commission’s 2013 ‘enlargement package’ assessed that none of the current Western Balkan countries have a functioning market economy, presenting a stumbling block to their accession. In this chapter, it is shown that this assessment is at odds with the real situation and that by any reasonable assessment all the countries do in fact have functioning and viable market economies, but that they fall down on the institutional aspects of the economic conditions for EU membership. The problem is that they have ‘too much’ market and ‘too little’ (or too weak) state institutions that could ameliorate the adverse social effects of an unregulated market system, and insufficient state intervention that would stabilise their economies in the face of external shocks such as the recent economic crisis.