The European Union (EU) today is the result of a gradual process of deepening and widening. The EU enlargement of 1 May 2004 to include ten new Member States was however unprecedented in scale and of a different order. It posed - and continues to pose - new challenges to the countries which already belonged to the EU, to the new Member States and to the EU itself, as well as to third countries. It is among the main factors which define the new Europe.

These significant issues form the subject of this book. The first part of the book concerns the impact of the 2004 enlargement on existing EU policies. The second part is devoted to the impact of EU policies on the new Member States. The third part of the book considers the management of the EU's new borders. Taken together, the essays in this book aim to present a broad yet detailed picture, from several interrelated perspectives, of the dynamic process of the EU's May 2004 enlargement.

This bilingual volume comprises the revised versions of papers first presented at the Third International Workshop for Young Scholars (WISH) / Troisième Rencontre International des Jeunes Chercheurs (RIJC). The third WISH/RIJC was held in Aix-en-Provence on 24 and 25 September 2004. WISH/RIJC is an annual conference which seeks to bring together the most promising young scholars in specific fields of European Union law from universities of the EU Member States, countries that are currently candidates for EU membership, and other countries in North and South America, the Middle East, Africa or Asia, including the United States, Canada, and China. Its objective is to identify and discuss themes which are likely to be the most significant topics of research in the field of European Union law in the first half of the 21^st century.