Change and Continuity in the European Union's Political Conditionality: Aims, Approach, and Priorities

The EU's political conditionality has acquired increasing importance with successive enlargements; this also goes for the period since 2004 compared with that before. The focus here is on change and continuity in conditionality policy with respect to its aims, approach, and priorities. The article presents and applies a three-dimensional analysis concerning the challenge to, the process of, and the management of that policy. Given the need for assessing it in a broad and dynamic context, the discussion revolves around three relationships: between conditionality and post-communist democratization; between conditionality and the enlargement process; and between conditionality and the EU itself in terms of institutional responsibility for enlargement and conditionality matters. This explains how the policy since 2004 has been driven by four factors: more difficult democratization cases from the West Balkans; lessons from the earlier 2004 enlargement involving East–Central Europe; the policy outlook of Commissioner Olli Rehn; and ‘enlargement fatigue’ and stronger pressures from EU actors other than the Commission. As a result, political conditionality has become broader in its scope, much tighter in its procedures, and less easy to control within a less enlargement-friendly environment in the EU and against less certainty about enlargement prospects.