Tesco has successfully pioneered expansion to CEE in the retail business where such expansions are fraught with numerous risks. For them, EU accession does not seem to alter much in terms of strategic orientation and perceived benefits from their CEE presence. For Soufflet, accession may open up the opportunity to export to the EU (Gligorov & Podkaminer, 2007). However, despite the seemingly secondary importance of EU and EU accession in network alignment in all cases they give a clear focus and long-term orientation to company strategies and coherence to network alignment (Timmer, et al. 2007). This conclusion as to the secondary but nonetheless strategic importance of EU accession in building industrial networks may be due to bias in our case studies which do not involve industries (with the partial exception of Elektrim) where regulatory aspects are prominent.
National governments are neither the source of problems nor are they facilitators of network alignment. Similar to the countries of the EU, this factor operates as secondary due to the passive role of government in privatization. In a few cases, governments have provided rents to local investors (Elektrim, Videoton), which have been used productively. The assessment of the government's role in network alignment via competition policy (telecom liberalization and the position of Elektrim), subsidies (support to local suppliers in agriculture in case of Soufflet, EBS and Dobrogea) or R&D support (Dobrogea) is much more complicated. Promoting an environment conducive to entrepreneurship -- one of the central themes of the EU industrial policy approach -- will be particularly important in candidate countries. Enlargement will also raise the stakes of the sustainable development strategy (Commission of the European Communities, 2003).
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