Deepening and Widening in an Enlarged Europe: The Impact of the Eastern Enlargement [antikvár]

Preface The EU-Consent FP6 project (Network of Excellence) with its profile of 'Wider Europe, deeper integration - Constructing Europe' started on 1 June 2005. The TeamS within this project has focused upon the main theoretical issue of deepening and widening in the EU25 or upon the relationship between the old and new member states. The team deals with the dynamics of transformation, transition and Europeanization within the different member states in a comparative approach in order to detect success stories as well as setbacks. In this regard, the team explores two dimensions of Europeanization as a common formation process of the EU-25: it investigates the transformation of the new member states on the one hand and the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the old member states on the other. In this way it tries to combine the processes of deepening and widening in order to see the main tendencies of the emerging EU25. Historical institutionalism as a major approach has been applied and the focus of the analysis has been put on polity as the institutional change (from the statehood to territorial and social organizations), but also on the changes in politics (EU level party formation) and in policy (cohesion policy, further enlargement and open method of coordination in policy fields) are to be taken into consideration. The conceptual framework has been built on the Europeanization processes and the following main topics can be foreseen as the major foci of research to be finalized within the team and in its cooperation with the members of the other teams: 1. The lessons of the accession period for institution-building 2. Main trends of Europeanization in public administration 3. Regionalization as administrative capacity-building in the EU25 4. Open method of coordination in the new and old member states 5. Vertical Europeanization (EU-nation state relationship) 6. Horizontal Europeanization across the EU25 7. The perspectives of further extension (Bulgaria and Romania) 8. Statehood, nation-building and institutional reforms 9. The macro-political actors in the Europeanization process. The Teams analyzes the issues of democratic governance in the new member states in the framework of the EU25 as an institution transfer and adjustment process. The institutional system of new member states has proved to be EU-compatible by meeting the minimal institutional requirements but it has not yet reached the stage of being EU-conform. Thus the institutions have developed properly to meet the criteria of 'legal membership' but not yet those of 'effective membership'. Actually, effective membership means sustainable competitiveness within the EU. It presupposes the elaboration of a