What if EU only includes EEC members?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

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Assuming the EU only remains these member nations (Germany annexing the DDR of course), how would that impact it today? How about the nations left out?
 
Once you let in the DDR, how can you reasonably deny Austria, for instance?

I can see that a more assertive Russia might have successfully demanded than no state bordering Russia be able to join either the EEC or NATO (especially the latter), but if they allow reunification of Germany and thus the DDR's entrance into the EEC, it just isn't reasonable to prevent Austria and Sweden or (the successor republics to) Yugoslavia from joining. Let alone Ireland, which is nowhere near Russia.

What would happen, though, if the Baltics, Finland, Poland, (Czecho)slovakia, Hungary and Romania were prevented from joining the EEC?

My guess is that they'd join a larger, stronger EFTA. You might even get functional entrance into the EEC, even if not formal. For instance, OTL, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are all part the Schengen area, without being members of the EU.
 
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Basically, you have to have Mitterrand's "two-tier" idea succeed, where the EEC members serve as the "inner federal core", and the non-EEC countries who want in would be part of the "outer confederation" ("federation within confederation").

Thing is though that it's unlikely to happen, because the Eastern European countries wanted in first chance they got, even with the implications of giving up some of their regained sovereignty...
That's why the idea tanked OTL...

A renment of that is the EEA, essentially the single market, which allows non-members to participate, but at the expense of not having much say...
Possibly these countries would want to just be part of the market, but according to Devvy, part of why they wanted to go straight in was to entrench their democratic transitions and the fact that the membership conditions were seen as big incentives to reform themselves...
Also, the fact that they don't have say I think is considered to be problematic for them, as they would be affected by the decisions being made, but they can't get their input on that...(or even less than what it is OTL...)

There's also the fact that being in the "outer tier" implied that they had inferior status, which they really resented as being unfair, considering in their view that they had to suffer from decades of Soviet control as a result of the "West's selfishness" ("Western Betrayal")...
 
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