After the ‘Big Bang’ Enlargement: The Politicisation of EU Membership Discourses

The EU’s Eastern enlargement in 2004/2007 represents a milestone in the evolution of European integration and a window into the broader dynamics and motivations underpinning this process. Yet while much has been written about the immediate institutional and political impact of the ‘big bang’ enlargement, insights into member states’ attitudes towards remaining candidate and neighbouring countries so far remain largely limited to anecdotal evidence from case study literature. In this study, we propose a comprehensive examination of evolving patterns of EU widening discourses through a comparative analysis of national parliamentary debates in France, Germany, Hungary and Poland between 2004 and 2017. Drawing on an original dataset, we employ political claim analysis to study the positioning and dominant frames used by political actors in four selected member states regarding the EU’s cooperation with countries of the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership. Our findings show a dominance of cultural and political frames, with a comparatively low relevance of interest-related concerns about economic or security issues. Overall, we find a shift from a confident focus on the external projection of EU values and practices towards a more introspective orientation emphasizing institutional efficiency and the quality of democracy. Our results point to a broader change in the nature of European integration and highlight the absence of a grand narrative for a new enlargement round.