12: EU Enlargement Between Boldness and Fatigue

The EU’s enlargements have shaped our continent and ended decades of division. Today, all the states of the Western Balkans have a clear European perspective: Croatia has already joined the EU; Serbia has recently started accession negotiations. Austria actively supports this process. At the same time, “enlargement fatigue” has come up. We will analyse the achievements of the EU enlargement strategy and look at the challenges and possible limits of future EU enlargements. We will discuss the topics from several perspectives (political, economic and civil society) and differentiate between the points of view of (new) members and candidate countries.