Europeanisation Beyond EU Borders: Challenges Faced by Candidate States

What challenges has Europeanisation faced beyond the borders of the European Union? The EU continues enlargement negotiations with Turkey; the Western Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia; Ukraine and Moldova in Eastern Europe; and Georgia in the South Caucasus. All of these countries first obtained EU candidate status and subsequently began accession negotiations, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Georgia. Four of these countries, however, launched accession negotiations shortly after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. Enlargement negotiations with Kosovo, a potential candidate country that has already applied for EU membership, are also expected. However, the process of Europeanisation in these countries began well before their formal EU candidacies. Turkey initiated its Europeanisation trajectory in the 1960s following its acquisition of associate membership in the European Community; the Western Balkan countries began their Europeanisation efforts in the early 2000s, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia; while Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia launched their Europeanisation processes after signing Association Agreements with the EU in 2014. Although all these EU candidate states began their alignment process with the EU’s norms, rules and practices—the so-called Community acquis—a long time ago, they have not yet fully aligned with the EU’s common objectives. Indeed, varying from one country to another, they have achieved only partial alignment, with ups and downs and differences across issue areas; in some areas Europeanisation is more advanced than in others, while in certain areas the process remains stalled. This Section thus raises the following question: What challenges have EU candidate states encountered in their Europeanisation processes? Candidate states have faced a wide range of obstacles across institutional, legal, economic, political, social, and external dimensions. These include, for example, limited administrative capacity and know-how, incomplete legislative alignment with the EU acquis, the high cost of alignment, dependence on EU financial aid, shifts in national and EU preferences, leadership changes, political instability, negative domestic framing of EU integration, the EU’s limited actorness in enlargement, uncertainty regarding EU membership, and broader regional and geopolitical constraints. However, further scrutiny is necessary to understand the barriers that Europeanisation has faced beyond the EU. By examining these obstacles outside the EU territory, this Section will also help ascertain the actual level of Europeanisation achieved by these candidate states so far. Accordingly, this Section invites panel and paper proposals that focus on the challenges to Europeanisation faced by these EU candidate states. Possible themes for the panels are as follows: -Long-Decade Europeanisation in Turkey and the Challenges Faced (Chair: tba) -Challenges to Geopolitically-Affected Europeanisation in Ukraine and Moldova (Chair: Ihor Moshenets) -EU Functionalism-Based Europeanisation in the Western Balkans and the Challenges Faced (Chair: tba) -Navigating Europeanisation under Autocratization in Georgia (Chair: Anastasia Mgaloblishvili) -EU Energy Enlargement, EU Green Enlargement, and the Ongoing Challenges to Europeanisation (Chair: tba) This Section is also open to panel and paper proposals addressing the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological aspects of Europeanisation in EU candidate states, as well as contributions exploring Europeanisation in potential candidate states, such as Kosovo.