How to manage integration into the EU market: Lessons from Eastern Enlargement for Ukraine's EU Accession - Julia Langbein

In this lecture, Julia Langbein argues that during the Eastern enlargement of 2004/07 the European Commission (EC) did not leave the developmental consequences of the massive rule transfer to the forces of the Single Market. Based on the analysis of EU documents and on interviews with EU officials involved in the operationalization and implementation of the EU accession criteria during the fifth enlargement, Langbein shows that the EC built up foundations of a short-lived transnational developmental state (TDS) to shape economic outcomes. Her lecture will show how the EU, and the EC in particular, has done this, and why. These insights correct the limitations of many enlargement studies that focus on the mechanisms of rule transfer without considering its longer-term economic and political consequences. The analysis provides crucial lessons for the governance of EU accession of Ukraine, since the outcomes of market integration in this case are more than ever intertwined with longer-term continental security considerations. The main lesson from the short-lived TDS is that institutional entrepreneurship can create ad-hoc, flexible market correcting mechanisms in the EU without major institutional change. This event is part of the Ukraine Lecture Series organised by the KIU in cooperation with the Jerzy Giedroyc Research Colloquium at the European University Viadrina.