"Eva G. Heidbreder's examination of the impact of expansion in the European Union is a clear demonstration of the politics that reside at the center of the Union.She integrates several theoretical perspectives and a number of cases to provide an interesting and important analysis of the European Union before and after expansion.This will be crucial reading for all scholars interested in the European Union and in European politics more generally." - B. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh

"The hidden side of the EU s enlargement to the East of Europe is revealed in this enlightening and theoretically sophisticated book. Against the generally held assumption that widening the EU precludes the deepening of EU integration, Heidbreder demonstrates conclusively that the accession process actually increased EU Commission action capacities in ways unanticipated by the Treaties - but only in certain cases. The EU Commission was able to gain creeping competencies primarily in those areas where it was able to frame policies in non-political ways, as distributive or as low-key soft regulation - the cases of administrative capacity building, cross-border cooperation, and minority protection. Where policies were seen as political, or as impinging on national competences because involving hard regulation or redistribution, by contrast, they were stopped by the member-states - as with nuclear safety and anti-corruption policy." - Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Boston University