Justifying and communicating eastward enlargement: enthusiasm, disappointment and pragmatism from the perspective of the European Commission, 1989-2004

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to study the induction of collective time perceptions by EU institutional actors to implement politically and economically motivated long-term projects through internal and external communicative actions. Within the different cases and periods analysed, I will specifically explore the perspective of the European Commission in EU's Eastward enlargement internal and external communication narratives from 1989 to 2004, the year of the actual enlargement project implementation. I have chosen to examine the question of the induction of forced transitional time perceptions in the process of enlargement from the perspective of European Commission actors because they assumed they were the self-appointed motor of the EU's Eastward enlargement process. In sum, this paper aims at opening the debate on the issue of the relationship of change in history with the opposition between the determinism of rules presented as timeless in a constantly extended present and the consideration of new principles once the perspective of a different future is suddenly open.