ABSTRACT
As has been exemplified by the case of the Eastern Enlargement of the EU, external drivers can considerably speed up the convergence of weak governance structures towards Western standards. The EU has indeed been successful in promoting democracy and economic development by fostering institution building in most Central and Eastern European transition countries (Roland 2006). Europeanization, i.e. the adoption of EU rules by transition countries, is possibly ‘the most massive international rule transfer in recent history’ (Schimmelpfennig and Sedelmaier 2005). This top-down process of ‘Enlargement Europeanization’ has been guided by the Copenhagen criteria for accession to the EU which demand the fulfilment of comprehensive political, legal and economic criteria (Foders et al. 2002).
