Europeanization Beyond EU Borders: the Challenges Faced by EU Candidate States

What challenges has Europeanization faced beyond the borders of the European Union? The EU continues enlargement talks with Turkey, with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia in the Western Balkans, with Ukraine and Moldova in Eastern Europe and with Georgia in the South Caucasus. And all these countries first gained official candidate state status from the EU and then they, except Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia, launched their accession negotiations process, and four of them just after the war started between Russia and Ukraine. While enlargement talks with Kosovo, a potential candidate country, who has already applied for an EU membership, are expected. However, Europeanization by those countries began earlier, even before their EU candidacies. Turkey launched its Europeanization process in the 1960s when it gained an associate membership from the Community, the Western Balkan countries started their Europeanization efforts in the beginning of the 2000s, or soon after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, while Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia initiated Europeanization more than one decade ago when they signed association agreements with the EU in 2014. Although all these EU candidate states began their compliance process with the EU norms, rules and practices (the so-called Community acquis) long time ago, they have not yet fully aligned with the EU common objectives. Indeed, varying from one country to another, they have achieved partial alignment, with ups and downs, and with variation across issue areas, i.e., in some areas Europeanization is higher than in other areas. In other situations, their overall Europeanization process faces impasses. This Section thus raises the following question: what challenges has Europeanization faced in these EU candidate states? Lack of know-how and institutional capacity, uncertainty with EU membership, high cost of the alignment, lack of EU financial aid, changes in national and EU preferences and in their leaderships, and EU weak actorness in enlargement are some possible examples to the obstacles behind their limited Europeanization. However, further scrutiny is necessary on the barriers that Europeanization has faced beyond the EU. By focusing on the obstacles to Europeanization beyond the EU territory, this Section will also help us to ascertain the actual level of Europeanization achieved by those candidate states so far. Accordingly, this Section invites panel and paper proposals focusing on the challenges to Europeanization faced by these EU candidate states. Possible themes for the panels are as follows: -Long-decade Europeanization in Turkey and the Challenges Faced (chair: Arzu Yorkan) -Challenges to Geopolitically-affected Europeanization in Ukraine and Moldova (chair: Ihor Moshenets) -EU Functionalism-based Europeanization in the Western Balkans and the Challenges Faced (chair: Fuzna Haider) -Navigating Europeanization under Autocratization in Georgia (chair: Anastasia Mgaloblishvili) -EU Energy Enlargement, EU Green Enlargement, and the Ongoing Challenges to Europeanization (chair: Arzu Yorkan) This Section is also open to other panel and paper proposals dealing with the conceptual, theoretical and methodological aspects of Europeanization of those EU candidate states, while welcoming also those touching upon Europeanization in potential candidate states, e.g., Kosovo.