The Scope and Limitations of Political Conditionality: Romania’s Accession to the European Union

Abstract: European Union (EU) enlargement to Central & Eastern Europe is commonly, and to a large extent rightly, seen as an asymmetrical process. And, as with the EU's political conditions, the dynamics of accession are decisive in driving forward compliance by candidate countries. However, the limitations on Brussels over this conditionality are less noticed. These derive partly from the timing of conditionality, inter-institutional differences and the bureaucratic nature of conditionality on the EU side; and partly from domestic factors in accession states, including previous trends in a country's democratization, the degree of commitment of national governments and institutional and political constraints. Viewing accession dynamics in push/pull terms, the case of Romania is examined. This country has been widely regarded as a particularly difficult accession country not least because of a complicated post-Communist transition. Some political changes occurred eventually under strong EU pressure, but there have been repeated conditionality failures due to a marked gap between government rhetoric and government action, problems of administrative incapacity and intrinsic difficulties over some of the conditions. In the end, a harder conditionality policy since 2004 did produce more results.