Austria joined the EU in January 1995. It had been a long road to membership.
In 2004 the European Union (EU) gained ten new Member States. However in many of the old Member States there were increasing concerns about the implications of this particular enlargement.
Two years after the historic enlargement of the European Union, the attraction of membership is manifested by the long line of new applicant countries. This report studies the role of the EU in the domestic policy processes in the former and current applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on the dynamics of the legal approximation process.
This report traces the origins of the EU decision to set up battlegroups, describes the underlying political and military concepts and analyses the challenges that the EU and its member states face in realising the Headline goal 2010, the plan adopted by the European defence ministers in June 2004 with the aim of improving European military capabilities. It also discusses the broader question of whether or not a military capability allows the EU to better achieve its goals.
The increased influence of the European Union in world politics has sparked a lively debate on what influence it actually has, its degree of coherence and on the qualities that characterise its behaviour. This report assesses how the EU is perceived by other states in international multilateral negotiations.
This paper looks at the evolution of Britain’s role in Europe in the light of the issues facing the UK Presidency in the second half of 2005.
In 2005 the stability pact of the EU was reformed. The revision followed upon violations of the EU fiscal rules by several countries and the breakdown of the pact’s enforcement mechanism.
The last decades have been characterized by deep regional integration in Europe as well as the emergence of new integration agreements in other parts of the world. This process has spurred an extensive debate about what the economic effects of integration are, both on insiders and outsiders.
The countries in "the class of 2004" are now full-fledged members of the European Union, with equal rights to participate in the policy process shaping its future. This implies a quality leap in their political status.