Расширение Европейского союза на восток в 1990-е гг.

Abstract

The EU enlargement in the 1990s due to the inclusion of Central and Eastern European countries is becoming one of the priority directions of the development of the most significant European organisation. Over this decade the EU summits adopted the decisions determining the enlargement strategy. The decision to enlarge the EU by 2004 through the accession of Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, the Slovakian Republic, the Czech Republic and Slovenia revealed the existing contradictions both among the EU member states and among the candidate countries, as well as of the EU citizens' controversial attitude to the event. The enlargement is called upon to promote the EU's development and strengthening. On the one hand the new members are bound to make it diverse and varied, on the other, the enlargement should not be carried out at the expense of the Union's achievements. This is reflected in the current conception of European integration as a unity of the processes of deepening and expansion.