THE LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE EU ACCESSION PROCEDURE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EU EASTERN ENLARGEMENT (FROM THE EU FOUNDING TREATIES TO THE TREATY OF AMSTERDAM)

Abstract

The last decade of 20th century in Europe was
marked by two important historical processes: the dismantling of the
communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe and the creation of
the European Union (EU).3
Those two processes are now entangled in
the process of perspective accession of the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe into the EU, known as EU Eastern Enlargement. This
process places the greatest challenge for all Europeans in 21st century:
the creation of one unified Europe. The creation of a united, peaceful,
economically prosperous, and humane Europe will be a difficult,
complex and long process, with significant economic, political and
geo-strategic consequences, both for Europe itself and the world. The
vision of a United Europe honors the painful, historic lessons learned
in the 20th century - if there is to be peace, economic prosperity,
political stability, rule of law and respect for human rights in Europe,
no Europeans should be isolated and left behind from the economic,
political and social processes on the European continent. While the
process of the EU Enlargement is a complex economic, political and
legal process, this article focuses only on the legal dimension of the
EU Enlargement as defined and interpreted by the EU. Such an
approach is not intended to distort the reality and the complexity of
the Enlargement process, but to provide a contribution to a better
understanding of the specific characteristics and the dynamics of the
legal dimension of accession to the EU and its implication for the
Eastern Enlargement. In particular, this article focuses on the
accession procedures to the integration in the EU, their development
in the course of the previous enlargement experiences and, most importantly, their interpretation and implementation by the EU in the
previous accessions. The purposes of such introspective are to present
the legal nature and the main tendencies in the development of the
accession procedure and their implications for the process of Eastern
Enlargement.