EU Enlargement Rounds and Dilemmas: The Successful, the Reluctant, the Awkward, and the Laggards

This chapter adopts both a historical and a comparative approach in studying EU enlargement. The aim here is to identify ‘whether' and ‘when' a country joins the Union, with an emphasis on the currently ongoing enlargement process in the Western Balkans. It starts with an overview of the conceptual and theoretical framework for studying and explaining EU enlargement. It then reviews how EU enlargement has proceeded over time by looking at its successful and unsuccessful cases, with a particular focus on the motivations and explanations associated with each of them. The chapter considers the successful rounds of enlargement, the reluctant and the awkward cases, and the ongoing (laggard) Southeastern Enlargement round. It discusses the main EU enlargement dilemmas and their implications for the current (unfinished) enlargement round in the Western Balkans in detail.