Advantages, disadvantages and dilemmas. Considerations on the accession of the central and eastern European countries to the European Union

In the prospective bargaining process between the CEECs and the EU on key issues of accession, the eastern applicants will not have too much to offer; their potentially most valuable asset-provision of unrestricted access to their domestic markets-has been among the stipulations of the Association Agreements. On purely economic terms immediate EU gains from eastern enlargement are perceived as very limited. Thus the CEEC bargaining positions are likely to be rather weak: This, coupled with the not necessarily established but still widespread Tears in the EU of unbearably high net transfers to the prospective new eastern members and consequences of unrestricted migration, makes the success of the prospective negotiations an EU eastern enlargement to a large extent dependent on the EU's benevolence, on the one hand, and the CEECs' self-restraint, especially in issues of migration and transfers, on the other hand.