From projection to introspection: enlargement discourses since the ‘big bang’ accession

ABSTRACT

This article explores enlargement discourses as a way to gauge the broader dynamics of European integration since the historical Eastern accession round. Studying debates in the national parliaments of France, Germany, Hungary, and Poland between 2004 and 2017, we use qualitative frame analysis to discern three types of political discourse on EU widening: normative discourses stress the EU’s soft power and its moral obligation towards candidate countries; pragmatic discourses concentrate on conditionality and enlargement as a stabilisation tool; and institutional discourses emphasize efficiency and state capacity. Our findings point to a diminished relevance of the external projection of EU values and practices and instead a stronger introspective emphasis on democratic quality and internal consolidation. Overall, discourses on EU enlargement thus mirror a broader shift in the perceived nature and direction of European integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Democracy
• discourse
• EU enlargement
• frame analysis
• national parliaments

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Frank Schimmelfennig, Marie-Eve Bélanger, Marc S. Jacob, Agnieszka Ciancara, Mila Mikalayev as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ note

Both authors have contributed equally to the manuscript.

Data availability statement

https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000472717

Notes

1. The Western Balkans hold a formal membership perspective and encompass (potential) candidate countries Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. We exclude Turkey from our discussion given that its quality as a very large and Muslim candidate country has triggered greater reluctance towards its admission in many member states that would risk dominating observed discursive patterns.

2. The total number of EU member states has dropped back to 27 following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal on 31 January 2020.

3. In addition to Malta and Cyprus that also joined the EU in 2004.

4. Further information on the coding process including tests on inter-coder reliability is available online: [reference to be added following review].

5. All direct quotations are authors’ translations of the original statements coded in our dataset.

Additional information

Funding

The manuscript was produced as part of the project ‘Constructing Europe’s Borders: Membership Discourses and European Integration,’ funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant number 172558. We are grateful to the Programme Hubert Curien – Germaine de Staël for financial support for a French-Swiss research cooperation;Campus France [44535XA; Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen ForschungSchweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [172558].