EU ENLARGEMENT, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
EU ENLARGEMENT, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Summary/Abstract: In March this year, the European Union celebrated the 55th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome. This Treaty was a start of the European construction which gave a new face to the continent after centuries of conflict. With 6 founding members, amongst which Belgium, the first steps of the European Economic Community were, as stated in its denomination, exclusively economically oriented. From the outset however, the founding fathers after the first years of settling the organisation, understood that deepening and widening the construction was the only answer for Europe to strengthen its objectives and be taken seriously by third countries. This political awareness was gradually boosted by the will to create a European environment within which the economic platform would be consolidated and the four freedoms would prevail, thereby eventually putting the quality of life of the population at the heart of its policies and placing social and global relations high on the agenda. It is therefore not by chance that, more than 50 years after the EU’s inception, art. 3 of the Lisbon Treaty pronounces: ‘The Union’s aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples’. The attraction of the EU towards other European countries is today not limited to economic matters

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