The Unbearable Lightness of EU Membership: Post-Accession Challenges Facing Bulgaria and Romania
The Unbearable Lightness of EU Membership: Post-Accession Challenges Facing Bulgaria and Romania

Author(s): Svetlozar A. Andreev
Subject(s): EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, Geopolitics
Published by: Kossuth Kiadó Zt.
Summary/Abstract: Anyone following the recent political and social developments in EU’s latest entries, Bulgaria and Romania, would have a strange feeling of ‘déjà-vu’. Namely, the post-accessio setting in these two countries strikingly resembles the situation in many of the East-Central European countries, which had joint the Union on 1 May 2004, during the first couple of years of their membership. This is mainly exemplified by the substantial waning of the support for the executive and traditional parties that had led those countries towards the much-coveted accession into the EU and transatlantic structures and the rise of different populist alternatives. Moreover, the high socio-economic expectations having been built up before enlargement did not fully materialise for the majority of citizens and business elites, thus disenchantment with and occasional protests emerged against the rising prices, the closing of infective domestic industries and the loss of national sovereignty. Finally, the uncertainties created for Bulgarian and Romanian rulers with respect to the international obligations, arising from EU membership, and the requirement to work under tight deadlines, demonstrated the inability of those elites to adequately react to external problems, such as the negotiation of the Reformed Treaty of the EU and the working out of a common European position towards the complex issue of the recognition of Kosovo.

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