ABSTRACT

The European Union has been providing considerable amount of financial aid for economic development to the candidate countries since the year 2000. Although, ten of the candidate countries joined to EU family by May 2004, new enlargement wave, (The Regional and Rural Development Policy) had a drive effect to lessen the discrimination and imbalance among the regions in the Union. In comparison EU15 to EU25, the disparities within 254 regions had been deepened with the new enlargement progress.

Before the enlargement process, the European Union had performed several programs for diminishing the disparities among the regions. In addition, there are serious inequalities and diversifications between such regions in the candidate countries. Further more, candidate countries have to accomplish the cohesion for Regional Polices of EU in their full-membership negotiations.