Poland in the enlargement process European Union

European Union, which was founded in 1957 with Treaty of Rome and grew from six to fifteen members throughout four enlargement processes, has started its fifth enlargement process officially at Luxembourg Summit in December 1997. Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Southern Cyprus, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia were included in the fifth enlargement process of European Union and Turkey was included in this process in Helsinki Summit in December 1999. Poland is the second largest country after Turkey among the countries in the fifth enlargement process in the scope of population and area. Besides, Poland is similar with Turkey concerning meeting the full membership criteria which were determined at Copenhagen Summit in 1993. The relations of Poland which began to live the transition process to democratization and market economy in 1989 after a long period of communist rule, with European Union started with Trade and Cooperation Agreement which was signed in 1989. Full membership negotiations which were started on 30 March 1998, have been comcluded at Copenhagen Summit in December 2002 and Poland's membership on 1 May 2004 was decided. Poland has been meeting the Copenhagen political criteria since 1997 through its candidacy to EU membership. While the country has a functioning market economy which is the first one of the economic criteria since 1997, it could not reach the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union completely yet. In the framework of the third criteria requiring the ability to take on the obligations of membership, Poland could not make the same level of progress in terms of strengthening the administrative capacity though it has implemented largest part of the Acquis Communautaire.