Paper Titles & Abstracts

The ongoing dispute over the entry of Romania and Bulgaria into Schengen has created tensions among existing and prospective members of Europe's free border regime and raised doubts about possible future expansions. In this paper I contend that the Schengen regime, despite some ominous signs, is likely to maintain a pragmatic and generally open policy towards countries that wish to join in. To support this argument, this paper reconstructs the evolution of Schengen's past enlargement negotiations, showing how their content, dynamics and key protagonists bear striking similarities with the recent tensions over Romania and Bulgaria. From an institutional perspective, previous expressions of 'enlargement anxiety' represent cyclical adjustment mechanisms that have helped the regime withstand new challenges and consolidate its presence in Europe. The correspondences with past events suggest that the latest dispute is leading Schengen towards a similar institutional path.