Editorial - EU candidates need patience and nerves of steel

Every autumn marks the time for dead leaves to fall and for the European Commission to take stock of the accession progress of countries seeking to join the European Union. For each candidate, it publishes a concise 100-page report outlining the country's position in all areas, from the economy and the rule of law to the environment and foreign policy. It's a far cry from the relative lightness with which the first enlargements were handled. One might think that the EU had simply learnt the lessons of past accessions that were not sufficiently prepared. In reality, from the outset, Europeans have been torn between the desire to integrate their neighbours and strengthen the EU on the one hand, and the fear of diluting the relative weight of each party – and, let's face it, the European funds that flow back to member states.

Above all, however, it is the geopolitical context that prevails when the candidate countries knock on the EU's door. Before 1990, the fear of seeing Greece, Portugal and Spain fall under the Soviet influence clearly hastened their integration into the European Economic Community. Once the Soviet giant had disappeared, the EEC was no longer in such a hurry to welcome its former satellite republics, well aware of the far-reaching economic and institutional catch-up that was required. The war in the Balkans in the 1990s long froze the prospects of ex-Yugoslav countries joining the EU, adding to economic challenges the trauma of ethnic massacres – a trauma that is still very much alive.

After a decade of patience and reforms, the most advanced former socialist republics joined the EU in the spectacular 2004 enlargement, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. The fears at the time of entire buses of cheap labour flooding into Western Europe proved unfounded – joining the European club boosted these countries' economic growth and allowed them to retain their workforce.