BETWEEN THE CENTRE AND THE PERIPHERY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION? TEN YEARS OF POLISH MEMBERSHIP IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

The major propose for this article is to examine ten years of Polish membership in the European Union. This paper analyzes characteristics of the system of Europe, as well as the process of “Europeanization”. It also covers the depiction of relations between the Centre and the Periphery of European integration and investigates the Polish role in a process of diffusion of norms and procedures within our continent. The main hypothesis of this paper is that nowadays Poland remains suspended somewhere between Centre and Periphery of European integration, without a real capacity of joining the “hard-core” of the EU in the predictable future.