Constructing Europe’s Borders. Political Discourse and Meaning Creation in EU Enlargement Debates

European integration is currently entering a new phase. The European Union (EU) as a common political project of European nation-states is contested by increasing Euroscepticism and populism. EU widening mirrors the broader changes within the European integration process as it redefines the EU’s borders, challenges the idea of European identity and calls for structural and institutional adjustments. Since the historic Eastern enlargement of 2004 and 2007, however, internal differences within the EU (e.g. Brexit, democratic backsliding among newer member states and candidate countries) as well as the geopolitical context (e.g. financial and refugee crisis, Russian imperialist aspirations) made further border expansion more difficult and enlargement activities slow down. The current literature on European integration falls short of demonstrating what drives political debates on EU enlargement on the remaining candidates in the Western Balkans and aspiring neighbouring countries in Eastern Europe. Against this background, this PhD thesis analyses political actors’ attitudes on EU enlargement since the ‘big bang’ accession with respect to three phenomena: i) salience and positioning on further widening the EU, ii) narratives impacting political debates on enlargement and iii) deviant discourse patterns in Central and Eastern Europe. This thesis links the literature on EU widening, political cleavages in European integration and discourse studies and acknowledges the fundamental importance of discourse analysis of political debates. It presents an original, hand-coded data set of national parliamentary debates on EU enlargement between 2004 and 2017 and allows to trace how particular positions and arguments on EU widening evolved over time. In doing so, this thesis contributes to a deeper understanding of the current historical and political shifts in Europe and explores the outlook of future EU accession. The analysis of parliamentary discourses across a variety of European actors shows that policy-makers debate predominantly in favour of further EU widening. However, the salience of enlargement issues remains on average rather low, which does not reflect the increasing enlargement scepticism among citizens. On the framing dimension, the debates indicate that political actors discuss enlargement based on cultural and political narratives, rather than arguments relating to economy or security. In particular, political actors focus on culturally inclusive narratives, the quality of democracy and legal compliance of candidate and neighbouring countries alike. Notions on the EU as a democracy exporter and ‘soft power’ are almost absent in the analysed plenary debates, though. The last part of this dissertation addresses the puzzle of Hungary and Poland being increasingly Eurosceptic, but at the same time supportive towards enlargement. It shows that neither political party cleavages, nor government participation but idiosyncratic national factors drive the structuring rationales in enlargement debates, hereby explaining the deviant discourse patterns along a cultural framing differentiation best. In summary, the findings demonstrate that post-2004 enlargement debates do not have an overarching narrative that would promote a future admission of aspiring countries. We rather see a broader shift in the general dynamics of European integration: in the wake of the Eastern enlargement, narratives about the EU as a civilian power extending peace and democracy in the neighbourhood became weaker and the symbolic meaning of EU enlargement as an European reunification process lost its political leverage. These developments give way to a more pragmatic and reserved approach in the EU’s cooperation with neighbouring countries