Delaying integration : the impact of EU eastern enlargement on individual CEECs not acceding or acceding only later

The process of European Union (EU) integration proceeds from economic to political integration. The economic integration itself proceeds from trade to financial to complete market integration. The sustainability of the process depends on some causal relation existing between economic and political integration. This causality is captured, in the first part of the paper, in the proposition that price-taking leads to policy-taking. In the second part of the paper a converse of the proposition on integration is discussed. This proposition of disintegration states that policy-setters are price-setters too. Finally, looking at the complex political geography of the EU and at the economic performance of individual transition countries, one conclusion can be drawn: It is all but possible for a country to be politically integrated into the EU and economically disintegrated from it.