유럽연합의 확대와 개혁 그리고 법치국가성

초록

The European Union developed the principle of conditionality, which requires acceptance of demands on the premise of the implementation of conditional agreements, from an element of the European Union's foreign policy to an instrument of the European Union's governance. The principle of conditionality, which was initially developed by international financial institutions as a safety device for their credit commitments, was implemented by the European Union in various forms and application methods in order to maintain governance. The European Union initially used this principle mainly as a tool to coordinate and manage foreign trade relations and development policy programs, but over time, the European Union developed this principle into a definitive element of the European Union's external expansion policy. Within the European Union, the application of the conditionality mechanism has been applied to the EU's enlargement policy, the maintenance of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and the formulation and implementation of various EU external and internal policies to secure the EU's unity and cohesion. The EU's enlargement conditionality is recognized as the most successful application of the conditionality mechanism through the EU. By applying the principle of conditionality in the process of accession of a state to the European Union, the European Union, through its enlargement policy, makes new member states accept and comply with its political, economic and social reform demands. The implementation of the European Union's enlargement policy toward new member states, which presupposes that the new member states meet the political and economic standards presented by the European Union, can be interpreted as a process in which the European Union makes efforts to ensure peace, democracy and economic growth throughout Europe. The accession criteria, known as the Copenhagen criteria, which a state must meet in order to join the European Union were established by the Copenhagen European Council in 1993 and strengthened by the Madrid European Council in 1995. The Copenhagen criteria, which determine whether a state is qualified to join the European Union, are made up of political criteria such as whether the state guarantees democracy and human rights, economic criteria such as whether the market economy is functioning properly, and legal criteria such as whether the state fulfills the obligations of a member state of the European Union and respects and enforces the law of the European Union. Despite the increasing heterogeneity in economic, cultural, social, and political aspects among the various member states due to the enlargement of the EU, the position supporting the enlargement of the EU argues that the EU's crisis response capacity in the various challenging problem situations that the enlarged EU will face needs to be strengthened through institutional reform of the EU system. In member states such as Poland and Hungary, where the EU violates the rule of law principle stipulated in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union, the rule of law conditionality regulation allows the European Commission to take measures such as suspending the payment of funds from the EU budget to the member state that violates the rule of law principle stipulated in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union. The discussion on whether the EU's rule of law conditionality regulation will be activated can also be seen as related to the challenge of the EU system related to the expansion of the universal value of the rule of law to Central or Eastern European countries and securing the ability to adapt to it.

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