How Much Does It Cost to Join the European Union and Who Is Going to Pay for It? Cost Estimates for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia, Complying with the EU Environmental Standards

This research is devoted to the estimation of the costs of compliance with European Union environmental standards, and the identification of distributional patterns of the cost bearing. In particular, this work is focused on the case of four Central European countries bordering with EU, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. The goal of this study is to estimate the costs associated with two scenarios: (1) an accession scenario that assumes a situation where the four countries access the EU in the year of 2005; and, (2) a status quo scenario that assumes a situation where the four countries do not access the EU until 2010. In addition scenario (2) has two possible versions: (2a) in which the countries' poor development and failure to comply with the EU regulations prevent accession, and (2b) in which the four countries are ready to access the EU by 2005, but the European Union is not ready for enlargement. The cost estimation approach that is employed here is dictated by the time constraint of the author. Therefore, the results are not based on original macroeconomic or CGE models, but on the extrapolation and forecasting of available results. Further, the total costs associated with the above scenarios are disaggregated into costs of investment by the private sector and costs of investment by the public sector. The final stage of the research involves identification of major actors who will eventually bear the costs of the investment as well as an evaluation of the distribution of costs among them.