Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation as a Precursor to EU Enlargement

Inter-parliamentary cooperation is an important aspect of the EU enlargement process, but it has largely been neglected by theorists and observers. Certainly, enlargement is a mostly executive-led process which entails protracted negotiations between the European Commission and the candidate governments. However, there is an underappreciated role played by the national parliaments of the candidate states who have over time developed extensive institutionalized links and habits of cooperation both with the European Parliament (EP) and with the national parliaments of the EU member states. There is an institutionalized bilateral link between each candidate parliament and the EP in the form of a joint parliamentary body which meets regularly, and which normally has a legal basis in the Association Agreement between the candidate state and the EU. Arguably, these regular bilateral interparliamentary forums allow the EP and the candidate parliament to engage in dialogue about, and joint scrutiny over, the accession negotiation process. Moreover, three candidate states (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) also participate along with the EP in the multilateral Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. In addition to their links to the EP, all candidate parliaments enjoy institutionalized multilateral cooperation with the 27 EU national parliaments, through their regular attendance (as observers) in the three major twice-yearly EU Interparliamentary Conferences (IPCs) – COSAC, the IPC for CFSP/CSDP, and the IPC on Stability, Economic Coordination and Governance in the EU. In this way parliamentarians from the candidate states have already been engaged for years in regular political dialogue and cooperation with national and European parliamentarians about issues of common concern, including EU foreign policy and economic governance. Indeed, this is arguably an important instance of differentiated integration insofar as these forums enable political engagement involving both EU and non-EU states beyond the “in and out” binary. It is the argument of this paper that this developing inter-parliamentary cooperation between the EU and candidate states – which has hitherto been subject to little scientific inquiry – should be understood to be, and studied as, an integral part of the EU enlargement process. This paper will for the first time give a comprehensive stock-taking of the many forms of parliamentary cooperation that link the candidate countries with the EU. Moreover, it will investigate the overall purposes of this parliamentary cooperation – be it parliamentary diplomacy, political dialogue, socialization and norm diffusion, and joint scrutiny of the accession negotiations and of the executive authorities of the EU. Finally, it will assess the effect of this ongoing parliamentary cooperation – on the candidate states, on the EU, and on the enlargement process as a whole.