Paper Titles & Abstracts

The research on eastern enlargement has found weak the impact of the EU membership on the transformation of social policies in Central and Eastern European countries focusing on the EU's most important financial instrument, PHARE programmes (de la Porte and Deacon; 2002; Ferge, 2002 and 2001; Lendvai, 2004). A single Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) came into effect in 2007, replacing various instruments introduced for the 2000-2006 period. IPA covers the candidate states (Croatia, F.Y.R. Macedonia, Turkey) and the potential candidate states (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia - including Kosovo) offering a tailored policy approach mimicking as well the implementation of structural funds and cohesion policy (Bache, 2010). The transformation of the EU's main instrument for social and employment policy reflects the complex process of policy learning and the constellation of interests around policy goals. In fact, the lesson drawing and policy learning of EU institutional level actors such as DG Enlargement can explain the search for an integrated policy instrument. However the content and priorities of the IPA combining the employment and social objectives reflect the intergovernmental constellation of interests and bargaining on the future cost of enlargement among member states and mostly shaped by the priorities set by France and Germany during the preparation of 2007-2013 budget. This paper explains the construction and establishment of the IPA through lesson drawing, policy learning and bargaining among member states from 2005 to 2007. Based on the historical intuitionalist explanation (Thelen and Steinmo, 1992; Thelen and Streeck, 2005), the paper analyses the interaction among ideas, interests and institutions in the formation of IPA through process tracing (George and Bennett, 2005). The empirical study of IPA and the evolution EU instruments for candidate states reflecting EU level transformations will be an original academic input into the Europeanization literature.