Wagener, Hans-Jürgen --- "Eastern Enlargement of the European Union" [2012] ELECD 679; in Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd (eds), "Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law

Editor(s): Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801003

Section: Chapter 14

Section Title: Eastern Enlargement of the European Union

Author(s): Wagener, Hans-Jürgen

Number of pages: 18

Extract:

14 Eastern enlargement of the European Union
Hans-Jürgen Wagener


1 INTRODUCTION

The European Union (EU) is a club with open access, as were its predecessors. Art. 98
of the Treaty establishing the European Community for Coal and Steel of 1951 states:
`Any European State may request to accede to the present Treaty.' All following trea-
ties contain a similar sentence. Since Amsterdam 1997 there is, however, a clause linked
to it; in the formulation of the Lisbon Treaty: `Any European State which respects the
values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become
a member of the Union' (Art. 49 current TEU). This Article 2 proclaims:

The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equal-
ity, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging
to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which plural-
ism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men
prevail.

What is a European state has never been specified. But the fact that Cyprus has been
accepted as a member and Turkey as a candidate shows that the term may be interpreted
rather broadly.
This built-in provision for enlargement by admission of new states respecting basic
human rights has one predecessor in the Northwest Ordinance passed by the US
Congress in 1787, which envisaged the enlargement of the United States not by extension
of ...