The EU and its neighbours: why deeping integration provides the key to achieving domestic political reforms in the EU neighbourhood?

The enlargement policy of the European Union (EU) has always been perceived to be one of the EU’s most effective foreign policy instruments (European Commission, 2009c, p.2). Throughout the history of European Integration, the policy of enlargement has proven its ability to bring democratic reforms in both the former dictatorships in Greece, Portugal and Spain and in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The strategy of enlargement is based upon the logic of accession conditionality, which implies setting specific political criteria that have to be fulfilled in order for a country to move further in the process that eventually envisages EU accession.