'Turbo-charged negotiations': the EU and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe

In April 1939, the European Union (EU) quickly agreed a Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe as its main response to the Kosovo crisis and NATO's bombing campaign. A key element of the Pact was the offer of the perspective of EU membership to all the countries of the region. This article aims to explain why the EU, despite the fact that it was already struggling in Spring 1999 to manage an existing membership queue of thirteen states, decided to extend the membership perspective to yet another five countries. By tracing the negotiations which led to the Stability Pact, the article finds that there were four essential pieces to this puzzle: crisis, path-dependency, policy-framing and the institution of the EU Presidency. Finally, on the basis of the case study, the article points to a number of more general lessons for the EU as a negotiating system.