8 - State preferences and the initial enlargement process

Summary

CEEC preferences

Whereas the reform-minded Central European governments declared their interest in becoming EC and CoE members soon after coming to power, their bid to join NATO was neither an immediate nor an automatic consequence of their transition to democracy or the end of the Cold War. Rather, it was motivated by their concern about the security situation in Central and Eastern Europe. I will focus on Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland because they were the first CEECs to request membership in the Western organizations.

When the Soviet Union released the Central European countries from its sphere of control and communist rule collapsed, the new governments proclaimed the “return to Europe” as their paramount foreign policy goal and almost immediately announced their interest in joining the EC and the CoE. To quote only a few leading officials of the time, the Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn declared as early as October 1989, “Our political resolve is to develop very close relations with the European Community.” Hungarian MDF party chairman and later prime minister, Jószef Antall, affirmed in January 1990, “We are firm supporters of this idea [of European unification], and unconditionally advocate European integration. We want to prepare ourselves for the Council of Europe and the European Community.” Polish President Lech Walesa said in July 1991 that “nothing is more important for Poland than membership in the EC,” and Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jirí Dienstbier stated in a meeting with EC Trade Commissioner Frans Andriessen in March 1990, “I think all of us should be members of one European Community” and that “Czechoslovakia wants to join the EC as quickly as possible.”