After conditionality

Opponents and proponents of the European Union’s (EU’s) eastern enlargement shared one major concern: the ability of the central and eastern European countries (CEECs) ¹ to apply and enforce the large and complex body of EU legislation – the acquis communautaire – after accession. Persistent compliance problems in the new members could undermine the functioning of the EU’s internal market, which relies on all member states’ credible commitments to play by the rules and their mutual trust in each other’s ability to do so. These concerns led the EU to impose a strict pre-accession conditionality that demanded the alignment of the candidate countries’ legislation and institutions with the entirety of the acquis prior to accession (see, e.g., Sedelmeier 2005: 141–53).