‘Only through enlargement’: the new European myth?

Abstract:

The paper assesses the validity of the ‘inevitable enlargement hypothesis’ - the belief that in the contemporary context of regional instability, a halt to further enlargement would inescapably undermine European Union security. The issue is confronted through the identification and inspection of the core assumptions of the inevitability hypothesis (the rationale here being that all of them must hold true if the hypothesis itself is to hold true). The paper concludes that, even though the European Union has a strong interest in addressing regional instability in Europe, she retains considerable freedom of action as to the means of achieving this.