This paper takes a look at the debates surrounding EU enlargement from the perspective of norms entrepreneurship. It begins by introducing the challenges that come with enlargement including both administrative and financial commitments that EU members must bear as they enlarge. In the cost-benefits analysis, it would only mean that EU would enlarge in circumstances where benefits have surpassed costs.

However this is not always the case with EU enlargement. Consequently leading to the need for a search of other motives behind the enlargement which this paper has attempted. The question to what extent are norms the drives of EU enlargement? has been answered with two objectives. First the examination of when and how norms are formulated in the process of an enlargement and secondly the evaluation of the role norms play in making the final decision to enlarge.

This paper is using an historical approach has probed the debates and negotiations around EU enlargement from the Second to the CEECs enlargement accounting for the role of norms in shaping debates and framing members’ behavior. Finally this paper has concluded that in cases where the need for norms entrepreneurship superseded the calculations of cost and benefits, EU framed the enlargement as a norms exercise hence the conclusion that norms play a key role in enlargement.