Research Article Emerging Patterns of EU Membership: Drawing Lessons from Slovakia’s First Two Years as a Member State Tim Haughton University of Birmingham Darina Malová Comenius University The 2004 enlargement of the European Union has provided political scientists with 10 additional cases to examine national preference formation and behaviour in the EU. The first two years of Slovakia’s membership suggest that while unique historical experiences and size contribute to explaining Slovakia’s stance on further integration, ideology, powerful societal interests and the opportunities of membership (as opposed to accession) hold the key. These findings not only feed into broader debates surrounding preference formation and related theories of European integra- tion, but also cast light on the behaviour of new Member States following the period shaped by accession conditionality. Introduction What determines a country’s stance on European integration? Scholarly explora- tions into the national preference formation of Member States have generated a number of different explanations including unique historical experiences, size, societal interests and ideology (e.g. Archer and Nugent, 2006; Aspinwall, 2002), many of which feed into the grand explanatory theories of European integration (e.g. Moravcsik, 1998). But what of the 10 new Member States which joined the EU on 1 May 2004? To what extent do these cases provide ammunition for the adherents or opponents of the different schools of thought? Two years of EU membership is an insufficient period of time to arrive at definitive conclusions. Moreover, given Mark Aspinwall’s (2002) and Dionyssis Dimitrako- polous and Hussein Kassim’s (2004) argument that Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) provide the best indications of countries’ preferences, the lack of an IGC in the 2004–2006 period would appear to pose problems. The new Member States did participate in the Convention on the Future of Europe, but at the time they were still in the process of accession. Nonetheless, an examination of governments’ stated priorities and behaviour at summits enables preferences, priorities and red lines to be identified and analysed. Indeed, this point highlights that we need to explore POLITICS: 2007 VOL 27(2), 69–75 © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Political Studies Association