EU Accession Negotiations in the Shadow of the Market

Authors

Deniss Kaskurs, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Political Science

First Advisor's Name

Ronald Cox

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Kenneth Lipartito

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Tatiana Kostadinova

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Markus Thiel

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Keywords

Transnational Interest Bloc, The Baltic States, Poland, EU Accession Negotiations

Date of Defense

3-23-2021

Abstract

At the end of the 20th century, the European Union (EU) had decided to expand into Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by extending accession invitations to ten CEE states. During the accession process, each nation had a bargaining committee which was established to negotiate with EU representatives about the entrance requirements. Formally, negotiations revolve around political and economic bargaining between politicians of the incoming member states and the EU representatives. Informally, however, private commercial entities heavily influence the bargaining process, both from the EU and from the member state side. This scholarly work refers to these entities as transnational interest blocs due to the dominance of large-scale transnational corporations, their corporate and business lobbying networks, and the wide geographical spectrum that they cover. In most of the issue areas that were bargained by the EU and the CEE states, transnational corporations were successful in advancing their policy agendas. Their success depended on a mix of factors that included whether transnational interest blocs had business allies in Eastern Europe and whether they were unified in their policy preferences.

Identifier

FIDC009565

Recommended Citation

Kaskurs, Deniss, "EU Accession Negotiations in the Shadow of the Market" (2021). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4687.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4687