Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,7, University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg, language: English, abstract: Since its foundation the European Union has expanded several times. At the beginning only 6 member states were part of the EU. In more than 50 years a lot more European states joined the European Union. Each expansion changed the European Union regarding cultural, economical and geographical aspects. Enlargement has always been an important topic for the EU and will also be important in the near future. Enlargement has a high impact on the European Union. This causes both positive and negative effects for the organization. The following seminar paper focuses on challenges and negative effects caused by the EU enlargement. Based on the potential challenges, it will focus on the question, whether further EU enlargement will cause a crisis in the European Union. The seminar paper is structured in four chapters. The first chapters give a short overview about the history of the EU Enlargement and explain the process of enlargement in detail. Following this, selected economic challenges and effects on the running of the EU caused by enlargement will be presented and discussed against the backdrop of the question, whether further EU enlargement can cause a crisis in the EU. The seminar paper will only focus on selected economic challenges and challenges for the institutions of the EU because of the limited number of pages.