EU Enlargement

Countries joining the EU start by submitting their official membership application. Once reviewed by the European Commission and the Council of the EU, a screening process begins to set a baseline for accession negotiations on the 35 policy area chapters of the acquis, which must align with EU standards. For some EU members, this process wrapped up in a few years, while for Turkey the process is still going after three decades. This B|Visual shows how many years the EU accession process has taken for each EU member state and official candidate after they submitted their membership application.

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