The Institutionalization of the EU’s Border Regime between Poland and Ukraine

Abstract

One of the EU’s palpable particularities consists of the enlargement process and the phenomenon of ‘moving borders’ by incorporating new member states (Bös and Zimmer, 2006; Maier, 2002). A closer look reveals that the EU’s ‘moving borders’ do not so much resemble the US experience of the frontier moving westward, since it is no gradual, continuous movement, but the overdetermination (Balibar, 2002) of already existing national borders. Consequently, shifting the EU’s borders eastward entails distinct steps of border transformations, both in geographical and in institutional terms. In the case of the 2004 enlargement, the transformation of the eastern Polish borders into external EU borders is characterized by three interrelated yet distinct developments: firstly, the conversion of Poland’s previously national borders into external EU-borders in the course of accession to Schengen; secondly, the institutional and organizational change of the external borders as it is triggered by developments on the EU level; and finally the gradual opening up of these borders, which accompanies the incorporation of the EU’s neighbouring countries in the Union’s efforts to control irregular migration. This chapter depicts these developments by addressing how the institutional setting of Poland’s borders changed in the preparation of accession to the EU and the Schengen area in the first section.