The European Institute of Romania (EIR) organized on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, the debate on the topic EU Enlargement Policy – Looking back and ahead, occasioned by the launch of the volume Last Train West: Revisiting Romania’s Accession to the EU in the presence of the author Jochen M. Richter, former Director in the European Parliament, Lecturer at the University of Luxembourg and the University of Düsseldorf.
Representatives of the central public administration, the Romanian academic and research environment, mass media, etc. attended the event.
Important issues were highlighted during the debate, including:
- The release of the volume takes place in a particular context: in the fifteenth year of Romania’s membership in the EU, a Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) reached its end, a war on the EU’s eastern border that also marked the acceptance of the candidacies of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.
- In Romania there is not yet a paper on this subject; the Last Train West is an anatomy of the accession process, it has not only a documentary value, but it is a topical issue.
- Security first expresses the conclusion reached after a long period spent in the pursuit of low prices and concluded with the Russian invasion in February 2022, which occasioned the broad cooperation of free and democratic nations.
- Last Train West – reviews the European challenges after 1989, the stages Romania went through on the path to accession, where the EU came from, its support (building blocks), and the lessons learned from the experience of recent years.
- The adoption of the acquis communautaire (community acquis) is only a step in the accession process; institutional construction matters at least as much as the acquis communautaire; it seems necessary to promote a better balance between economic development and political progress.
- Romania benefited from a window of opportunity that it managed to capitalize on by concluding the accession negotiations in December 2004; this has facilitated remarkable economic progress, marked by 800% growth in the last two decades; however, regional gaps persist, or have even increased.
- The EU is the most important institutional structure, a true convergence machine.
- Negotiation within the EU is burdened by a series of asymmetries that should be balanced; they were manifested in the process of Romania’s accession to the EU and continue to be felt in the accession to the Schengen area.
- Starting in 2020, there has been a refinement of the EU`s enlargement strategy, with an emphasis on transparency and the conclusion of negotiations with the chapters referring to the rule of law and fundamental rights.
- Enlargement has again become a topic of discussion in the EU; however, certain fatigue and slowness of the processes are noticeable, against the background of a difficult context that highlights some shortcomings of the candidate states (political criteria, border stability).