How the EU's 'big bang' enlargement changed foreign policy

The European Union’s leap from 15 to 25 (and later to 28) members was supposed to have consigned the Cold War legacy of separate and hostile camps in Eastern and Western Europe to the shelves of history.

The fault lines that opened up across Europe in 2003 over the war in Iraq were therefore ominous signs for the development of a cohesive EU foreign policy after the fifth enlargement of the Union envisaged for 2004. All Central and Eastern European candidate countries signed letters su...