Issues of European Integration for the Western Balkans

The accession of Romania and Bulgaria on 1 January 2007 had relatively little impact on the structure of the European Union: the number of its member states increased by all of 8% and its total population by some 6%, while its combined economic output grew by scarcely 1%. The change was thus far less significant than a mere three years earlier, on 1 May 2004, when the then 15-member European Union expanded to 25 members, thereby seeing its total population increase by 18% and its combined economic performance by some 5%. Prior to the “big” enlargement of 2004, the developed countries of the European Union primarily feared the harmful effects of price and wage differences between the old and new member states. They believed that a huge migration of labour from the cheaper eastern reaches of the expanding zone of integration would be triggered in a westerly direction, while productive capital might be relocated within the union from the older member states to the new investment markets, lured by their comparatively low wages and other costs. These expectations turned out to be unfounded, however, partly because the EU-15 countries were able to employ temporary restrictions to arrest or prevent undesirable market developments.1 In addition, a seismic change was also avoided because the movement of both capital and labour is determined by a set of conditions that takes many factors into account.