EU political conditionality needs to be credible in order to have any impact. Existing studies commonly view this instrument of foreign policy as being credible if it is consistently applied by the external actor and based on a set of precisely defined criteria. In contrast, we argue that a recipient country's compliance with the EU’s political criteria is determined not only by the EU's formal offer or withdrawal of rewards. Rather, when evaluating their options, target governments also anticipate the EU’s behaviour based on political statements from individual member states. If such bilateral signals deviate from the official line, the credibility of the EU’s policy of conditionality, and thus its effectiveness as an instrument of EU foreign policy, may be undermined. While this political phenomenon is not new, we still miss convincing theoretical explanation and systematic empirical research. Based on a quantitative analysis we demonstrate the relevance of bilateral signalling for a recipient country’s compliance with EU criteria. Qualitative case studies of two contested aspirants for membership illustrates the causal mechanism of anticipated conditionality: While Turkey has been formally offered the membership perspective as main incentive, the actual accession is not assessed as being credible. In Ukraine in the first years after the Orange Revolution, in turn, the government self-imposed accession conditionality and anticipated to be finally rewarded with membership although no such an incentive has been formally offered by the EU. By systematically analysing the effect of bilateral signalling on the credibility of EU conditionality, we empirically demonstrate that imperfect or uncertain credibility can both impede and stimulate political reforms and affects the effectiveness of conditionality in the EU’s enlargement and neighbourhood policies alike.
