Pretty sensible assessment of the situation regarding the EU expansion policy.
The problem is that our countries are expected to rise to the required economic standard before joining. But until they do so, they don’t have equal access to the EU market because EU policies, as is normal, favour it’s members. This makes it practically even harder to economically improve because EU countries are our closest market partners. In other words, being effectively excluded just ensures that we will remain excluded even longer because our capacity to grow is degraded by the exclusion.
The more the EU kept growing, the less reasonable it became to expect small outside countries to develop before joining, because the market access kept shrinking for them. The current policy is from a practical perspective pretty anti-expansionist, purely by effect if not intention.
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Pretty sensible assessment of the situation regarding the EU expansion policy.
The problem is that our countries are expected to rise to the required economic standard before joining. But until they do so, they don’t have equal access to the EU market because EU policies, as is normal, favour it’s members. This makes it practically even harder to economically improve because EU countries are our closest market partners. In other words, being effectively excluded just ensures that we will remain excluded even longer because our capacity to grow is degraded by the exclusion.
The more the EU kept growing, the less reasonable it became to expect small outside countries to develop before joining, because the market access kept shrinking for them. The current policy is from a practical perspective pretty anti-expansionist, purely by effect if not intention.