Resumen de The Impact of the EU Enlargement on Economic and Monetary Union: What Lessons Can Be Learnt From the Differentiated Integration Mechanisms in an Enlarged Europe?*

Frederic Allemand

• Within the context of balancing the issues stemming from a widening and deepening of the European Union, differentiated integration mechanisms are taking shape as new organisational concepts for Community integration. Yet the increasing leverage granted to them from an institutional perspective could jeopardise the unity of the Community legal order . . . unless differentiated integration is regarded as a means and not as an end in itself; as such its success therefore depends on its ability to maintain the long‐term interests of all the Members States to go further in the EU integration. Faced with its own enlargement problems, EMU has demonstrated an aptitude to some extent for absorbing the non‐participating States. Four distinct legal reasons have emerged from research into its functioning and relations between the different categories of Member States to justify its attractive force. An assessment of the current and future enhanced cooperation frameworks using these four elements demonstrates the existence of essentially cooperative systems, whilst their appeal is only modest.