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This paper deals with the legitimacy of the EU’s external borders and the decision-making rules for changing them. First, while the EU should not indefinitely expand, we can identify no normative grounds for precluding in advance any liberal democratic nation-states from participation in the European project. Second, for those countries having more or less thick legal ties with the EU, or who are otherwise substantially affected by European decision-making, we argue for the institutionalisation of flexible deliberative communities. For closely associated countries, we argue that the EU has special duties in opening the door to membership. Third, we address the legitimacy of the EU’s decision-making procedures for deciding on accession candidates and creating association agreements with non-member states. Here we defend the EU’s current unanimity requirement for the former and its supermajoritarian decision rules for the latter. Finally, we suggest that nationalism is the primary obstacle to the achievement of just inclusion outcomes for non-member states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the main conditions for post-communist countries to attain membership of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was that national laws should be brought into line with international human rights standards, with special attention to political rights for minority groups. In the case of the Baltic States, the national elites played a major role in the process leading to more liberal citizenship laws towards the Russian-speaking minority. However, was the changing of formal institutions a manifestation of a liberalization of the national elites' orientations towards this minority? The article argues that instrumental elite strategies explain why nationalist attitudes seem to prevail both before and after membership, despite less restrictive laws and internationally-orientated elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]