A Study of Realized, Declared and Future EU-Accession Dates Using System Dynamics Modeling: The Case of Spain, Poland, Croatia and Turkey

In this study we propose an EU-Accession model that simulates the EU accession dates for the realized (Spain, Poland), declared (Croatia) and future (Turkey) accessions. The processualist approach is adopted and a System Dynamics model based on the EU’s standards is developed from a technical and institutional perspective. The model consists of three balancing loops: political stability, economic stability and adopting the acquis. These negative feedback loops exhibit a goal-seeking behavior towards fulfilling the criteria set by the EU. The flow variable ‘fulfillment of membership criteria by the candidate’ increases the ‘total progress of the candidate’. As a candidate country fulfills the membership criteria, final approval of membership process begins, which is simply denoted by ‘ratification’ variable in the model. An acceptance percentage indicates that when the country reaches that threshold level, her membership is approved. The simulation results correctly reproduced the accession date for Spain as January 1986 and for Poland as May 2004 with acceptance percentages of 85% and 80%, respectively. When the model is run for Croatia with the 85.6% acceptance level (very close to the value for Spain), the results reproduced the declared accession date for Croatia that is 1 July 2013. The possible accession dates for Turkey are forecasted as August 2012 for 80% acceptance level, July 2014 with 85%, and March 2018 with 90% acceptance level. The key contribution of this article is the dynamic model which can be used to forecast the possible accession dates of EU candidates based on the country variables of each candidate. This is the first and only study which analyzes EU accession from a systems thinking perspective.