ABSTRACT
On 1 May 2004, ten new states – eight of them in postcommunist Central and East Europe – joined the European Union (EU), followed by Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007. Policy-makers and scholars worried that having devoured the long-dangling carrot of EU membership, these states had moved ‘beyond conditionality.’ Without the potential threat of withholding membership, the EU arguably no longer had the same ability to co-opt and coerce these states into further adjusting their political, economic, legal, and social institutions to mesh with European norms and practices. Lost in this discussion has been one remaining set of unfulfilled conditions, with the carrot of membership still hanging in the air: the Maastricht criteria required for countries to join the euro zone.
