The 2015 Enlargement Package: What is New and How it Helps the Enlargement Countries?
The 2015 Enlargement Package: What is New and How it Helps the Enlargement Countries?

Author(s): Milena Lazarević, Sena Marić, Dragana Bajić
Subject(s): EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: Centar za evropske politike CEP
Keywords: EU-enlargement;
Summary/Abstract: The Enlargement Package, annually issued by the European Commission and comprising a strategy for the EU enlargement, including a set of country reports, has been impatiently awaited this year due to the long-announced improvements compared to the previous years. This particularly concerns the new approach to assessments in country-specific progress re-ports, i.e. the introduction of a number of changes in the reporting style in order to increase quality, reliability and transparency of reports. The new approach in the annual country re-ports, along with five-tier assessment scales, is also intended to increase comparability be-tween the countries as well as to provide the stakeholders with the possibility to scrutinise the process and the enlargement countries’ progress towards the EU. It places emphasis on the state of play in countries regarding their preparedness for membership and provides guid-ance for what should be done so as to meet the accession requirements. Although this novel-ty brings greater clarity and understanding about what needs to be done by a candidate coun-try, it is impossible to guess whether those recommendations represent a benchmark for the opening of a given negotiating chapter or merely a referral to the most relevant issue, which is to be dealt with in the following year. In other words, what is the connection between the Progress Reports’ recommendations and the opening and other benchmarks?

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