ABSTRACT
Over the past 15 years EU policy makers have placed a growing emphasis on the rule of law, particularly the reform of the judiciary, in the transition countries of the Western Balkans. In spite of the EU’s efforts and the publicly announced commitment to implement the far-reaching reform of the judiciary declared by the leading politicians in the Western Balkans, the reform process still suffers from instability and incoherence. In order to measure the EU’s influence this study has established a differ-
entiation of four phases within the “rule adoption spiral” which consist of rule transfer, rule adoption, rule implementation and norm socialization. Through utilizing the spiral theory of rule of law adoption, it can be concluded that the main problem observed in all case study countries is the incomplete and/or selective implementation of the adopted norms. Rewriting laws and constitutions and the far-reaching institutional reform comprised of court system reconstruction, improvement of court infrastructure and retraining judges, is only the first and ‘easiest’ step that potential EU membership candidates need to undertake. The following step in the spiral which is the implementation of law, a formal operation of introducing legal texts into the domestic system of law, is still only partially completed. Finally, the EU rule of law promotion has yet to bring the Western Balkan accession countries to norm socialization which is the last phase of the proposed rule of law adoption spiral. Reaching this phase will signal the achievement of legal norms having become rooted in the domestic culture via the evolutionary process, through which social interaction with the EU has led the Western Balkan accession countries to adopt and endorse a prescribed “way of thinking, feeling and acting.”1
