Twenty years of EU accession: learning lessons from Central and Eastern European agriculture and rural areas

Twenty years have passed since the first eastern enlargements of the European Union (EU). This paper assesses the impacts of EU accession on agriculture and rural regions of Central and Eastern European countries and identifies the reasons behind differences in country performance. Results suggest that EU accession brought modest convergence with established Member States. However, countries capitalised on the opportunities given by EU membership to differing extents. Specifically, the Baltic countries and Poland performed best post-accession, while Croatia, Slovenia, and Hungary witnessed much slower rates of convergence. The findings are consistent with the notion of convergence clubs, with persistent variations in catch up rates between groups of states. To explain membership of lower- and higher-speed convergence clubs, the paper identifies four sets of factors, namely initial conditions, pre-accession policy frameworks and actions, administrative preparedness, and post-accession policies.