Abstract:

Since its establishment, the European Union has gone through six waves of enlargement, reaching its current situation of 27 countries. Many areas have been included in the Union's integration policies, but the enlargement policy still maintains its importance. Within the scope of the European Union's enlargement policy, there are currently seven countries, five of which are candidates and two of which are potential candidate countries. It is important to understand the economic and political developments in these countries and to analyze the candidacy processes better, both to understand the dynamics of the EU's enlargement policy and to create a candidacy perspective for the future processes. The aim of this study is to try to understand how close the political and economic structures of these seven countries are to becoming a member of the Union. In the same line with its purpose, the research question of the study, is which of the candidate countries to the European Union is or are close to the membership process. In line with this purpose and research question, first of all, the candidacy processes of these countries will be briefly discussed. The recent economic data will be analyzed in the light of economic indicators. The scope of the study is limited to only political and economic data, and other issues that may prevail in the socio-cultural and membership processes are excluded from the study. In order to better serve the purpose of the study, a mixed research method, which includes both qualitative and quantitative research methods, was adopted. Qualitative research method was used in the sections where the enlargement policy of the European Union, the historical processes and political comparisons of the candidate countries were discussed, and the quantitative research method was used in the section that analyzed the economic data. The findings obtained during the study are that among the 5 candidate countries, Turkey has a better performance both politically and economically. However, contrary to this situation, Turkey is the country where the candidacy process is almost the most painful. The candidacy processes of other candidate countries are on a relatively flat ground compared to Turkey. As a result, it has been concluded that other dynamics beyond the political and economic performances of the candidate country are more dominant in the enlargement processes of the European Union.

Keywords: