NATO Applicant States: A Status Report

The Congressional Research Service, a department of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national and international policy issues. Some of the CRS work is carried out specifically for individual members of Congress or their staff and is confidential. However, there is also much CRS compiled material which is considered public but is not formally published on the CRS website.

For that reason a number of other organisations try to keep track of these publications and make them publicly available via their own websites. Currently, ESO uses the following websites to track these reports and allow access to them in ESO:

EveryCRSReport.com
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

In some cases hyperlinks allows you to access all versions of a report, including the latest. Note that many reports are periodically updated.Nine central and eastern European nations are seeking an invitation to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the November 2002 NATO summit: Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. There are general guidelines for evaluating nations seeking NATO membership; however, these guidelines are not a checklist that, when completed, would automatically guarantee membership.

NATO members decide on the basis of consensus whether the admission of a state will serve the interests of the Alliance and promote European security and stability. This report, which was compiled from memoranda prepared in January 1999 at the request of former Senator William Roth, contains brief assessments of the NATO applicants’ qualifications. The report was updated in April 2003.

• Primary Source

Federation of American Scientists (FAS): Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports https://fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html

EveryCRSReport.com https://www.everycrsreport.com/

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