"Membership requires that candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and, protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. Membership presupposes the candidate's ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union."
For the sake of this essay I will be splitting these criteria into four categories: Political Criteria, Economic Criteria, Absorption Capacity of the EU and Legislative alignment.
Political Criteria
The political criteria outlined in the Copenhagen agreement are as follows
Democracy: Functional democratic governance requires that all citizens of the country should be able to participate, on an equal basis, in the political decision making at every single governing level, from local municipalities up to the highest, national, level. This also requires free elections with a secret ballot, the right to establish political parties without any hindrance from the state; fair and equal access to a free press; free trade union organisations; freedom of personal opinion, and executive powers restricted by laws and allowing free access to judges independent of the executive.
Rule of Law: This implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with documented laws, which were adopted through an established procedure. The principle is intended to be a safeguard against arbitrary rulings in individual cases. In order to satisfy this set of requirements, several of the Central European states that recently joined the EU had to drastically improve. More recently, the EU has asked for Romania to take strict measures to resolve its problems with regards to organised crime and corruption. It has therefore threatened to emplace sanctions upon Romania if it does not meet the requirements before the assigned deadline.
Human Rights: Human rights are those rights which every person holds because of his/her quality as a human being; human rights are "inalienable" and belonging to all humans. If a right is inalienable, that means it cannot be bestowed, granted, limited, bartered away, or sold away (e.g. one cannot sell oneself into slavery). These include the right to life, the right to be prosecuted only according to the laws that are in existence at the time of the offence, the right to be free from slavery, and the right to be free from torture.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is considered the most authoritative formulation of human rights, and is more stringent than the very similar European Convention on Human Rights. The requirement to fall in line with this formulation forced several nations that recently joined the EU to implement major changes in their legislation, public services and judiciary. Many of the changes involved the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities, or removal of disparities of treatment between different political factions.
This has been in light recently with the debate over Turkey’s membership. Therefore the EU has had to review Turkey’s application and deadlines have been placed for it to meet the requirements necessary, with regards to Human Rights.
Economic Criteria
The economic criteria, broadly speaking, require that candidate countries have a functioning market economy and that their companies have the capability to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union. This must not be mistaken for the fact that there is no specific economic level a country has to meet in order for it to be considered for membership.
It can also be said that one of the requirements to join the EU, is the consideration of possibly joining the single European currency (Euro) at some point in time. Many countries have already joined the Euro and the EU has been putting pressure on the remaining countries to take it into serious deliberation.
Absorption of capacity of EU
This simple means that for a country to acquire membership into this economic club, not only do they have to meet the specific requirements, but also the EU must have the ‘absorption capacity’ to welcome them in.
Legislative Alignment
This indicates that all prospective members must enact legislation in order to bring their laws into line with the body of European law built up over the history of the Union, known as the acquis communautaire. In preparing for each admission, the acquis is divided into separate chapters, each dealing with different policy areas. For the process of the fifth enlargement that will conclude with the admission of Bulgaria and Romania (expected in 2007) there were 31 chapters. For the talks with Croatia and Turkey the acquis has been split further into 35 chapters.
When considering Turkey’s application, it is argued that Turkey does not meet the requirements of Human Rights and that it only is considered a European country because 3% of its land lies in tradition Europe. With respects to Romania and Bulgaria, it has been agreed that they enter the Union in the beginning of 2007 only if they meet the requirements of Rule of Law which they are currently lacking. In this particular case it is expected that for the first time in history this supernational body will be emplacing sanctions on a member state.
