NORMATIVE ASPECTS OF EU POLICY TOWARDS THE WESTERN BALKANS: LESSONS FROM THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
NORMATIVE ASPECTS OF EU POLICY TOWARDS THE WESTERN BALKANS: LESSONS FROM THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Summary/Abstract: The enlargement of the EU and NATO towards Central and Eastern Europe has been a much debated subject in international relations. Lately, two novel European integration approaches have been developed. First of all, liberal intergovernmentalism (Moravscik, 1998) shows that the expansion to the East can be best understood in terms of liberal values and norms. In this sense the practice of the Western community in shaping the attitudes of the opponents of enlargement is very important. Furthermore, geopolitical or ideological interests seem to have been decisive in some cases, particularly, as liberal intergovernmentalism predicts, where governments lack intense economic interest. Secondly, a neo-Gramscian analysis (Bieler, 2002) of the enlargements towards Central and Eastern Europe against the background of globalization clearly identifies the neo-liberal restructuring of the new members’ and applicant countries’ economic-political system as the underlying social purpose of enlargement. Thus, the decision-making processes in the EU, influenced by its internal distribution of power and the social forces of the states from Southeast Europe have to be taken into account when discussing their integration bids. But none of those perspectives has analyzed if the EU expansion was influenced by the way the Union acts as an international actor. Moreover, what challenges to normative power did the last enlargement entail, what are the new normative challenges in the Western Balkans, and what normative lessons can be drawn up from the integration of Central and Eastern Europe? These are some question I will try to answer in this paper.

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