EU Eligibility, Central Europe, and the Invention of Applicant State Narrative

Abstract

This article is about changing regional understandings in Europe and how those changed understandings reflect and shape contemporary geopolitical arrangements in the context of the eastward enlargement of the EU. It is argued in the article that two interrelated questions form the basis of the identity assumption of the eastern enlargement of the Union. First, where Europe's eastern boundary lies, and, second, how the eastern boundary is connected to the region-building, identity formation and moral language within the EU both at national and supranational scales. Special emphasis is given to a national moral language rather than to a supranational one, since, as argued in the article, national and European identities do not need to be mutually exclusive phenomena, but can bolster each other. The boundary between the EU and the 'East' is formed particularly through the national identity politics of the post-communist states applying for membership, and boundary drawing is a result of the 'European criteria' set down by the EU as well as the communist experience of the applicant states. It became a spatial strategy for the post-communist applicant states to locate themselves in historical and geographical Central Europe - the imagined moral heart of Europe - by separating themselves from the signifier 'East' in order to gain recognition as European in the early 1990s. This new narrative is argued to be particularly important for the post-Cold War national identity projects of the applicant states.

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