While the enlargement enables the creation of the world's single largest market, the integration challenges pose a threat to the enlarged European Union (EU).

Ten new members joined the EU on May 1, 2004, raising its membership from 15 to 25 and extending its eastern frontiers significantly. This is the fifth and most ambitious enlargement of the EU since its formation, as the European Economic Community, in 1957. The new members that joined the EU are: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Estonia, and Malta. The new members are poorer and more rural, but their economies are growing faster. Though its enlargement is a challenge for the EU, it will also bring opportunities in terms of security and economy.

The EU needs to consider how to unite its different internal and external security policies. The political dynamics will change as it will have to become more flexible after enlargement. The ability and willingness of the member states to be integrated into the EU's policies will vary much more than in the current Union. The areas like economic reforms, taxation and border policies will be driven by coalitions of the willing and able rather than by the Franco-German partnership that has long guided the Union. If enlargement is creating so many challenges before the EU, then why enlarge it in the first place?

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