Democracy and the Rule of Law in the Process of Preparation for EU Membership – The Case of Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia

This paper presents an analysis of the processes of democratization in the countries from Central and Eastern Europe in the context of the EU membership. After a brief theoretical overview of the EU’s capacity for democratization, the article highlights the increased attention of the researchers paid to the quality of democracy and, in particular, to the rule of law as a key mechanism guaranteeing the successful functioning of representative democracy. The purpose of the article is to find empirical evidences of whether the EU has learned lessons from the accession of Bulgaria and Romania that can apply in its relations with the candidate countries from the Western Balkans in the direction of democratization. The research objective is the interaction between the EU and the candidate countries, which is realized through the main instrument of pre-accession conditionality – the annual reports of the EC which are used for monitoring and evaluating the progress of each applicant country towards meeting the EU membership standards.