European Union Enlargement

Extract

European Union Enlargement. Edited by Neill Nugent. New York: Palgrave, 2004. 328p. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

The well-known difficulty of reviewing edited books is in this case enhanced by the high number of relatively short chapters (19) and also by the double ambition of this collective enterprise. On the one hand, the book deals, as the title suggests, with the recent and momentous enlargement of the European Union by the 10 Central and Eastern European countries finalized in 2004. The ambition of the editor is, however, broader. Actually, five to six of the 19 chapters deal with “enlargements,” that is, with the whole set of territorial accretions of the Community/Union, starting from the 1973 opening to the three northern countries (Great Britain, Ireland, and Denmark), the 1981/86 broadening to the southern (Greece, Spain, and Portugal), the 1995 inclusion of Austria, Finland, and Sweden, and, finally, the “10+2” enlargement, referring therefore also to the two pending candidates of Romania and Bulgaria.