Pre-accession strategy

: The accession treaty (Photo: European Commission)

The EU runs pre-accession projects to prepare applicant countries for EU membership. On the one hand, it offers economic assistance; on the other, it makes strong demands that applicant countries harmonise, as far as possible, their laws with the 100,000 pages of EU law prior to joining the EU.

This can impose a major burden on applicant countries before membership.

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