Peterson, John; Birdsall, Andrea --- "The European Commission: Enlargement as Reinvention?" [2008] ELECD 271; in Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo (eds), "The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union

Editor(s): Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203458

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: The European Commission: Enlargement as Reinvention?

Author(s): Peterson, John; Birdsall, Andrea

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

4. The European Commission:
enlargement as reinvention?*
John Peterson and Andrea Birdsall

Only the most courageous contemporary analyst could claim to know what
significance will be attributed by future historians to the 2004­7 enlarge-
ments of the European Union (EU). Perhaps the radical expansion of the
EU's membership will come to be seen as one of the most heroic and con-
sequential steps ever taken towards the political unification of Europe. By
this view, the EU system would absorb, without damaging itself, an 80 per
cent increase in member states over three years. Specifically, enlargement
would succeed in three different senses. First, the EU's institutions would
smoothly integrate nationals from the new 12 member states. Second, the
EU12 (as they have come to be called), many of which only recently
regained their sovereignty, would grow comfortable with the idea of
pooling it, thus enhancing the legitimacy of EU decisions and institutions.
Third, the EU would continue to function without any `seizing up' of its
(already intricate) system of decision-making.
Alternatively, 1 May 2004 might mark the moment when the unique
European post-war experience of pooling sovereignty and delegating
authority to the EU's institutions became a sort of museum piece. A system
designed during the Cold War for limited ends, and which (by some
accounts) generated many unintended consequences, would finally lose
its almost miraculous capacity for collective action. Especially in light of
the rejection of the EU's Constitutional Treaty ­ a result sometimes blamed
...