The European Commission and the Process of Enlargement

Abstract

The European Union (EU), which began with the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community, has now successfully completed five cycles of enlargement, one in each decade starting in 1973, which has increased the organization’s diversity at all levels, including, of course, the staff of the European Commission. In this chapter, the focus is on the opening to the east and raises two questions: To what extent are the countries of Central and Eastern Europe seen as “fully” European? And how has the history of the region and the process of accession shaped the entry of new officials and managers from these countries? To answer those questions one needs at least a basic grasp of the history of the region prior to World War II, of the Communist period, and of how the countries emerged from Communism. One needs also to understand the long and complex accession process, which led to important changes within the candidate countries and which also served to educate the negotiators on both sides of the table about the reality “on the ground” within the countries and about how the European Commission actually functioned. This chapter provides a brief overview of that history and the negotiation process and concludes with a discussion of the formal processes for bringing the new staff into the European Commission.