EU’s Last Enlargement and its Consequences for the Western Balkans: Croatia – Nearing the Finishing line?
EU’s Last Enlargement and its Consequences for the Western Balkans: Croatia – Nearing the Finishing line?

Author(s): Miruna Troncota
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Politics, International relations/trade, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: Университет за национално и световно стопанство (УНСС)
Keywords: Croatia; European Union; Western Balkans; Enlargement; EU Conditionality
Summary/Abstract: I explored in this paper which obstacles stopped Croatia being part of the enlargement wave in 2007 and have delayed further on its accession. Moreover, I was interested in finding out whether we can distinguish a Croatian model of integration in the EU, with its typical problems, drawbacks and successes. The hypothesis that I try to test in this paper is that even though EU conditionality as it has evolved lately implies a stronger differentiation of policies and rewards for each country of the Western Balkans, which may cause both competition but also discontent, it mostly achieved in making the model of Croatia a unique one that should not and could not be followed by the other future candidate countries in the region. The same can be said by the model of accession of Romania and Bulgaria, the Balkan exceptions which ’distorted’ EU trustful enlargement policies.

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