Europeanization Beyond EU Borders: Challenges Faced by Candidate States

What challenges has Europeanization 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 state status and subsequently began accession negotiations, with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia. Four of these countries 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 Europeanization in these countries began well before their formal EU candidacies. Turkey initiated its Europeanization trajectory in the 1960s following its acquisition of associate membership in the European Community; the Western Balkan countries began their Europeanization efforts in the early 2000s, following the dissolution of Yugoslavia; while Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia launched their Europeanization 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 Europeanization 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 Europeanization 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 Europeanization has faced beyond the EU. By examining these obstacles outside the EU territory, this Section will also help ascertain the actual level of Europeanization achieved by these candidate states so far. Accordingly, this Section invites panel and paper proposals that focus 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: tba) -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: tba) -Navigating Europeanization under Autocratization in Georgia (Chair: Anastasia Mgaloblishvili) -EU Energy Enlargement, EU Green Enlargement, and the Ongoing Challenges to Europeanization (Chair: tba) This Section is also open to panel and paper proposals addressing the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological aspects of Europeanization in EU candidate states, as well as contributions exploring Europeanization in potential candidate states, such as Kosovo.