Turkeyu0092s fulfilment of the EUu0092s first set of political criteria qualifies the country to start negotiations. But EU membership is much more demanding than most of Turkeyu0092s political and business elite realise. They hope that they can bargain away many of the onerous requirements for...

As the EU enlarges, it needs to consider how to promote solidarity between its members. On the one hand, it makes sense for it to strengthen solidarity because it will grow larger and more diverse and will, consequently, have to galvanise support for its system, principles and policies. This...

The paper analyses the national debate on the future of Europe in the candidate countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The positions taken by representatives of governments and national parliaments at the European Convention show that divergences in the EU integration process do not occur...

This paper analyses the duties and rights that the Treaty of Accession allocates to the 10 new member states of the European Union on the basis of the common European law. Since the EU of the current 15 member states did not sufficiently adjust the European institutions, the structure of...

The accession of Central and East European States into the European Convention of Human Rights system was both a threat and a promise to the system. The threat resulted not only from the substantial increase of the number of Contracting States and that of the case-load, but also from the demise...

The history of the development of the European Convention on Human Rights represents a unique experience of widening the scope of protection of an international instrument from classical political and civil rights to certain social and economic rights. With a particular focus upon the protection...

Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union establishes that the Union “shall accede to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” In early 2013, negotiators of the 47 Council of Europe member states and the European Union finalised a draft...

The Union's noncompliance with any of the standards of gay rights protection it had at its disposal in 1997, when the pre-accession Regular Reporting of the East European applicants for membership commenced, did not prevent it from promoting gay rights protection as a necessary pre-accession...