Estonia's application for membership of the European Union

Abstract

In this work the application of Estonia for membership of the European Union will be researched. The aim of the study is to find out if and when Estonia will or will not be a part of the European Union and mainly we will focus on the difference between the political and economical point of view. Will the European Union just take the official, mainly economical criteria in consideration, or will it in the end leave these official criteria behind? Our way of researching will be one of analyzing literature, but especially primary sources like the regular reports published by the European Union concerning Estonia. The conclusion this study will draw after analyzing the used sources is that the European Union will consider mainly, if not only political criteria, and maybe not even the official ones, for allowing Estonia and the other applicants to enter or not. This will be found out by analyzing the previous rounds of enlargements of the European Union, by looking what a new enlargement would mean for the European institutions and of course by analyzing what the European Union says about the Estonian application in their annual reports.