Political Stability in Europe

We can see that political factors have also been of fundamental importance in this ongoing enlargement process. Independent of the economic benefits of accession or enlargement (depending on whether one is a candidate or an existing member) there is certainly a strong case to be made for promoting the notion of the political stability that membership invariably brings – although in some cases this may be merely the displacement of a previous area of instability to a position beyond the ‘new border’ – as an increasingly significant driving force in the enlargement process. Not only does this however relate to the desire for what can now be termed ‘soft security insurance’ on the part of prospective members, but also to what we may term, the EU’s ‘wider civic duty’ to admit all those that pass the ‘entrance exam’ essentially laid down by the ‘Copenhagen Criteria’. This point is again often couched within the context of the desire for politico-administrative ‘lockin’ on the part of the potential new Member States. Moreover, it is also perceived as a dynamic issue, as the failure to ‘project’ stability is seen as merely an invitation to ‘import’ instability. As such, this point relates in particular to the broad acknowledgement of the significant changes that have occurred at the global political level since the end of the Cold War, and in particular to the realisation that the process of European integration has a fundamental impact - with the potential to be either good or bad – upon the EUs neighbouring states.