The Effectiveness of the European Union’s Enlargement Strategy in the Western Balkans: Analysis of Candidate States’ Compliance with Rule of Law Issues

Whereas there is a vast literature assessing the effectiveness of conditionality for the Europeanization of the Central and Eastern European countries’ (CEECs) societies, this has not been the case with the accession process of the Western Balkans. Arguably, the countries from the Western Balkans face different conditions from previous candidates, including a revised European Union (EU) enlargement strategy with an emphasis on rule of law issues, discussions about “enlargement fatigue”, and relatively more negative elite and public views in the member states regarding future enlargements. However, scholarly work on the state of accession of the new EU candidates is scarce and does not provide a systematic evaluation of states’ progress in implementing the EU accession conditions. In this study, we assess the effectiveness of the EU’s enlargement strategy towards the Western Balkans on candidate states’ compliance with EU accession criteria related to the rule of law area covered in Chapters 23 and 24 of the acquis. We address the following question: How have observed changes in the EU’s approach towards different Western Balkan countries affected their likelihood of complying with the EU rule-of-law requirements? More precisely, we compare the harmonization and implementation performances of Croatia and Macedonia in the period between 2005 and 2013. We expect that differences in compliance between the two countries are the result of variation in (1) the determinacy and consistency of EU conditions, (2) the credibility of accession, (3) the capacity of candidate countries, and (4) domestic costs. To test hypotheses, we combine information on candidate states’ legislative activity with regard to separate rule-of-law requirements, data from the EU progress reports and interviews with key stakeholders in the Commission and the two Western Balkan countries.