Roma advocacy and EU conditionality: Not one without the other?

This article brings together the literature on European Union conditionality and transnational NGO advocacy by considering the fundamental role non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played in the EU's efforts to bring about reforms in countries working to join the organization. Based in part on interviews in Romania, the Czech Republic and Brussels, and focusing on the case of anti-discrimination and the Roma (Gypsies), I consider both how the EU helped NGOs achieve their objectives and how NGOs influenced the creation and effect of EU requirements on candidate countries from Central and Eastern Europe (now new Member States). While problems for the Roma have certainly not disappeared, one cannot fully appreciate the development of either advocacy or conditionality regarding the Roma without considering the mutual dependence of NGOs and the EU. The NGO role is frequently disregarded in the top-down EU accession process, but I find that neither NGOs nor the EU would have been successful at advancing or sustaining domestic change on their own.

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