EU Enlargement and Anticorruption: Lessons Learned from Romania

Since early 2000, the European Union (EU) recognized the importance of curbing corruption and began to require that candidate countries adopt and implement anticorruption strategies prior to accession. Given Romania’s long struggle with corruption, it was required to adopt more anticorruption strategies than any other candidate to date.

The present paper will elaborate upon the degree to which the EU was able to influence domestic political will, identify and discuss lessons learned from Romania that may aid the EU in future enlargements, and evaluate whether the ‘carrot’ approach was more effective than the ‘stick’ approach in propagating domestic political will.