Understanding the ‘absorption capacity’ of the European Union

This article offers an analysis of the large inventory of definitions proposed for ‘the EU’s capacity to absorb new members’, by the EU institutions as well as scholars and Brussels-based public affairs companies. It also makes a comparison between 1993, when the term ‘absorption capacity’ (AC) is used for the first time in an official text, and the period from 2005 on, when this term reappeared frequently in European terminology and came to be defined with more precision. AC mainly refers to the capacity of the EU to absorb new members while functioning efficiently and maintaining the momentum of European integration. It has three main components: economic, political, and institutional absorption capacities. However, despite some consensus on its usage, the term remains ill-defined and misleading. To remedy this problem, the Commission recently replaced the term with the phrase ‘integration capacity’. Nevertheless, further efforts should be made to clarify this concept, which is still being used in official texts without enough precision.