Nav 12-2: The future of EU enlargement

Length	Browsing: 30 minutes Reporting: 25 minutes
Goal	To analyze the arguments used in the debate on the future enlargement of the EU. To use the CVCE website.
Introduction	Enlargement of the European Union is an increasingly contested issue in EU politics. In this exercise, you examine and compare arguments in favour and against enlargement.
Steps	Go to CVCE. Under ePublications, click on ‘European integration studies/ Historical events’. Open ‘1998-2009. The unification of Europe’. Under The enlargements of the European Union, click on ‘How far should enlargement go?’. Open the Resources section. Here you can find newspaper articles, (excerpts from) EU documents, and recorded interviews on the subject of enlargement. Select one source in favour and one against enlargement. Read and/or listen to the arguments. (Note that some sources may not be available in English. In this case you can use Google translate to get some idea of the arguments.)
Questions	What arguments are used in the enlargement debate? What types of arguments are used? Are they related, for instance, to the economy, to geopolitical considerations, to domestic political considerations, to cultural identity, or to something else? What explicit or implicit perspective do these arguments convey on the question of what defines ‘Europe’?

Links

Cambridge University Press