In the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) (Article 49), it is stated that any European country that respects the principles of the European Union may apply to join. This stipulates two main conditions - geographical and principal.
The principles of the European Union are formally described as Membership criteria of the European Union and are often referred to as Copenhagen criteria because these political and economic criteria were first established in June 1993 at the Copenhagen European Council.
Excerpt from the Copenhagen Presidency conclusions:
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"Membership requires that the 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."
Most of these elements have been clarified over the last decade by legislation of the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (Luxemburg) and the European Court of Human Rights. With respect to conflicting interpretations in some of the current member states, this is described below.
The Copenhagen criteria are most commonly divided into three groups. During the candidate country negotiations they are regulary monitored, progress and regress in their respect is mentioned and on that base are made the decision when the particular country will join, what other measures should be taken, etc.
Neither the EU nor the candidate countries have the power to change the geographical reality, so the compliance to the geographical condition is decided much earlier in the enlargement process - at the beginning, when adopting the first opinion of the application of a particular country. Later this subject is no more elaborated.
Geographical
In the Maastricht treaty of 1992 (Article 49), it is stated that any European country that respects the principles of the European Union may apply to join. No mention is made of enlarging the EU to include non-European countries, but the precedents with turning off Morocco's application and speaking about Israel's closest integration, "just short of full membership" show that currently for non-European states it is impossible to get EU membership.
However, some non-European states have different degrees of integration with the EU stipulated by agreements, always short of membership. The current frameworks for development of such agreements are the Barcelona process and the European Neighbourhood Policy .
It should be noted that the majority of cartographers include Cyprus within the boundaries of Asia.
Political
Democracy
Implies that all citizens of the country should be able to participate on an equal basis to the political decision making for every single governing level, from local municipalities up to the highest, national level. This also implies free and secret elections, the right to establish political parties without any hindrance from the state; fair and equal access to a free press; free trade union organisations; executive powers restricted by laws, and with free access to independent judges
Rule of Law
The rule of law implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with written 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 their judicial procedures, make them more transparent, introduce accessible procedures for appeal and take measures against certain communist-party nominees in judicial ranks.
Human Rights
Rights which every person holds because of his 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 created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the most authoritative formulation of Human Rights (more stringent than the very similar European Convention on Human Rights). This requirement forced several of the recent EU-members to implement major improvements in their legislation, public services and judiciary. Many of the changes involved the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities. It also demanded radical abolishment of the privileges previously enjoyed by communist party members and leaders.
Respect for and protection of minorities
Members of such national minorities should be able to maintain their disctinctive culture and practices, including their language (as far as not contrary to the human rights of other people, nor to democratic procedures and rule of law), without suffering any discrimination (see also the 'Convention for the Protection of National Minorities', COE, 1995).
The convention from the Council of Europe on this was a major breaktrough in this field. However, the area was so sensitive that the convention did not yet include a clear definition of such minorities. As a result, many of the signatory states added official clarifications to their signature on which minorities in their country were involved. Some examples (List of declarations made with respect to treaty No. 157. Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities):
- in Denmark: the 'German minority in South Jutland';
- in Germany: 'Danes of German citizenship and the members of the Serbian people with German citizenship....the ethnic groups traditionally resident in Germany, the Frisians of German citizenship and the Sinti and Roma of German citizenship';
- in Slovenia: 'Italian and Hungarian National Minorities'.
Many other signatories just stated that they don't have any such national minorities.
A certain consensus was reached (among other trough the work of legal experts, the so-called groups of Venice) that this convention refers to any ethnic, linguistic or religious that defines itself as a distictive group, that forms the historic population or a significant historic and current minority in a well-defined area, and that maintains stable and friendly relations with the state in which it lives. Some experts and countries wanted to go further. Nevertheless, recent minorities -as immigrant populations- have nowhere been listed by signatory countries as minorities concerned by this convention.
Economic
The candidate countries should have a functioning market economy and their companies should have the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union.
Legislative
All prospective members must enact legislation in order to bring them into line with the common European legal framework, known as the Acquis Communautaire. It is divided into 31 chapters dealing with the different aspects of law and policies.
Of course legislation is closely connected to economic and political criteria.
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