EUROPEANISATION

In political science Europeanisation has generally been regarded as becoming more European like. More specifically than this the term has been defined in several ways

According to Bulmer (2006), the term Europeanisation has five different uses. First, Europeanization is connected with the external boundary changes. The most open examples of such rules extensions institutional requirements and values are the alterations associated with the EU membership preparation for the recent member states that joined in 2004 and 2007. Secondly, Europeanisation is used to define institutional developments at the EU level. The term is also used as penetration of the national governance systems (Bulmer 2006). This is the main use of the term and encompasses the processes of adaptation as concerns the institutions, political behavior patterns policy and the like. The fourth and fifth usage of this term concerns the political organization models exportation as well as the development of governance capacity at the EU level.

This paper reviews the insights offered by Europeanization perspective in understanding the eastern enlargement of 20042007.The eastern enlargement of 2004 and 2007 was a process of process of expanding the European Union by acquiring new member states (Dimiter 2008). The process commenced with the six inner members who came up with the European steel and coal community in 1952. Since that time the membership of EU has grown to 27 including the recent expansion to Romania and Bulgaria in 2007. As at now negotiations on accession are in the process with a number of states. This enlargement process is occasionally referred as European integration. On the other hand European integration is also used to refer to the growth of cooperation among EU member states as the state governments allow for the ultimate national laws harmonization.

Eastern enlargement 20042007
The eastern enlargement of the European Union has been taking place since the second part of 1990s. It is a major Europeanization project that was from the start justified by a pan European community ideology and it entailed a common European identity. In the process, the Central and East European Countries (CEECs) brought forward their accession claims of their alleged belonging to Europe, not only in terms of their geographical location but also in terms of their membership in the normative European community (Knill 2001). Their ambition to return to a European identity, multilateralism, and liberal democracy after an artificial break was prepared. In formal terms enlargement is the legislative and institutional systems alignment in the applicant states with an acquis communautaire consisting of large amount of legislative material referring to a number of policy fields including gender equality.
Just like what the Mediterranean states did in the 1980s, the communist states in the Eastern and central Europe just came out of dictatorship and wanted to bring together their new democracies. They also wanted to make themselves part of European Union and make sure that they did not plunge back into the Russian sphere of control. The NATO and EU provided an assurance to these nations idea and EU was as well taken to be fundamental in guaranteeing economic success of these countries (Dimiter Toshkov 2008). However, the desire of EU to accept the membership application of these countries was less than rapid. The fall of communism came quickly and an anticipated. Dealing with the unexpected reunification of Germany and the addition of its seventeen million poorer people and still maintain the union projects on line was a great challenge for EU.

However the earlier communist states were able to overcome these issues. The United States of America also put a lot of pressure on EU to accept the membership application of these states. Although lastly trying to control the number of members and the US encouragement, the EU got into talks with the ten countries and they were able to somehow offset the influx of the large poor eastern member states (Bulmer and Burch 2005). At the end of it eight Eastern and central European countries which were (Estonia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia) as well as Malta and Cyprus, the Mediterranean islands became members of EU in may 2004. This enlargement was the largest in terms of landmass people and number of countries though not in terms of Gross Domestic Product.

The main concern to the more developed countries of EU was the less developed state of these new countries from the east. As a result these countries put some travel restrictions on citizens of these countries as well as limits on getting work permits in the more these more developed states. Due to these problems Bulgaria and Romania whom the commission regarded as not ready to join EU in 2004, came to join later in January 2007. Just like the earlier states they too faced some restrictions such as lack of EU funds due to their lack of progress in their judicial systems.

Insights of Europeanization perspective in understanding the eastern enlargements of 20042007
According to Bulmer  Burch (2001), Europeanization can also be defined as an incremental process of diverting the shape and direction of politics to the degree that the European community economic and political dynamics develop into part of the organisational national and logical politics and policy making. According to the bottom up approach, when the countries start to affect the European Union policies in a given area, thats when Europeanisation is said to occur. The certain area of change is in European institutions, the European Union enlargement and the measured authority acquirement over the national member governments in several areas hence creating a centralised European polity. The issue of whether Europeanisation is an ongoing process that will lastly result to complete European government or whether centralisation wont be able to outdo the continuing national identities and the growing localism interest, is a matter of debate.

The thought of Europe as a unified economic or political entity is more recent than assumptions about its historical and cultural commonality. According to Bulmer  Burch (2005), paralleling developments since the formation of the ECSC (European coal and steel community), to the coming out of the European Union and beyond, there has been intensive studies on continents integration. The European community has expanded from a six member union to a twenty seven member state. A total of six enlargements have occurred during the last half of the past century with the greatest of all being that of 2004.

According to Schmidt (2006), the constitutional treaty failure provoked much questioning on the future state of EU. It was not understood whether it would be possible for further integration, whether the enlargement would go on or whether the EU would withstand the long term challenges. Many feared that the European Union would lapse into a condition of increased reunion as this was viewed as a watershed moment in the European Union development. The two different bases of EU legitimacy whereby one derived from democracy and citizenship while the other derived from treaties between states, showed existing tension due to their different opinions (Schmidt 2006). The failure of the constitution treaty was due to the fatal and unavoidable ambiguity between the two sides.

The Blair era in Britain had one of the most prominent legacies of European policies concerning its public salience. Though the European integration was seen as a high salience issue at the start of new labours tenure, the process was transformed into a low salience issue at the end of Blairs period in office. Due to the Euro-scepticism of the British public and the new labours which were somehow pro-European outlook, the fall in salience of the European policy was attributed to the electoral interest of Blairs government (Oppermann 2008 p.173). The new labour pursued a mix of diverse governing strategies that were meant to add to the evident downward trend in the salience of European integration.

Rationalist institutionalism represents a logic of consequentialism which treats actors as rational goal oriented and purposeful. According to Dover (2007), actors take on strategic interactions using their resources to enhance their utilities on the basis of given, fixed and ordered preferences. These actors follow an instrumental rationality by weighing the costs and benefits of different strategy options taking into consideration the behavior of other actors. From this angle Europeanization is considered as a rising political opportunity arrangement which provides some actors supplementary resources to exercise influence while sternly constraining the efforts of others to pursue their goals.

Neofunctionalists come to the opposite conclusion that Europeanization provides sub national and societal actors with new resources since the EU enables them to by pass the national executives. Multilevel governance approaches proponents argue on the other hand that Europeanization does not empower one particular group of actors over but it increases their mutual interdependence giving rise to more cooperative forms of governance (Schmidt 1996). For instance at the time when French firms gained more power vis--vis their national government by passing, the Spanish firms did not. The Italian regions have been far less able to ascertain their domestic power as compared to their British or Austrian counterparts. While the Spanish territorial system is going through intense change, the German federalism has been reinforced by Europeanization. On the other hand the equal treatment and equal pay orders that empowered women in Great Britain showed no effects in France.

Europeanization took a new turn with the fall of communism and the post communism merger between the east and the west which led to its gradual association with the EU enlargement to the east (Bulmer  Burch 2001). the scope of Europeanization expanded covering the impact of European union integration on states that previously different economic and political experiences. Europeanization, Eastern style is associated with the transition to market economy and democracy as well as the adaptation to the exigencies of the western advanced models. The European Union allowed the west to introduce a new model of coercive adaptation for the green countries of Eastern Europe. The Europeanization of the southern countries is taken as a good example of effective European Union impact on the late developing countries. Southern Europe stands out as a promising case of victorious economic development and democratization that was mostly influenced by EU membership.

Generally the understanding of Europeanization is multifaceted, dynamic and malleable which is also introverted and associated with the enlargement and internal development of the European Union (Dimiter 2008). Different implications of Europeanization are meaningful to south east Europe which is a region of starkly contrasting development levels, cultures, geographies and strategic interests. South Europe is in several ways the best case not only for the beneficial and successful effect of the process of Europeanization, but also for how the identity of Europe will be formed in the future.

Conclusion
A great deal of the debate on Europeanisation has somewhat been inward looking with much focus being on the way in which the already existing member states are being transformed following their partaking in the European Union structures. The unions willpower to ensure the compliance of the applicants to the acquis communautaire before they join the club, and the political importance attached to the membership of the union by the accession applicants, points to the fact that Europeanisation is not only confined to the current member states but also to those outside the geographical boundaries of EU. In the same perspective, its clear that expanding the Europeanization scope beyond the current member states of European Union, will help us understand better the eastern Europe transformationenlargement process and the accession negotiations  that are in progress as well as enable us to contribute towards the modification of the terms rather distorted conceptual content.
Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is rather a recent and still relatively small but it has been a fast growing research area since 2003 primarily in the context of the European Union eastern enlargement. Europeanisation is not concerned with the question of why and how states decide to surrender their sovereignty aspect to supranational polities but it rather focuses on Europeanisation research in what happens after a country joins the European Union. However such exclusive post-ontological focus on Europeanization made it harder to sustain the study of European enlargement. The current understanding of Europeanization in the Eastern Europe is not sufficient as compared to the understanding of the same in the central and Western Europe. This implies that more information on the Eastern Europe enlargement is necessary.

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