The limits of EUropeanisation

Over the past decade, the EU’s experience with the rule of law and human rights in its new member states has been ambiguous. Today, the results of the fifth enlargement are overshadowed by growing concerns over the quality of adherence to the EU values (as defined in Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union) in its new member states. Although signs of concern are present in several recently admitted members states, including Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Malta, it is Hungary and Poland that are considered the dominant examples of democratic backsliding and a turn towards authoritarian tendencies within European societies. These concerns are expressed mostly by liberal intellectuals, journalists and scholars. This chapter aims at more critical reflection on the ambiguous role played by the European Union itself in these processes. Commencing from a critical overview of the dominant institutionalist theories of enlargement Europeanisation, the chapter reassesses the EU’s impact on the internal politics of its current and prospective member states. Based on two case studies of Bulgaria and Serbia, I argue in the chapter that de-Europeanisation could be conceptualised by two forms of legitimation practices: revolutionary, and opportunistic.

Based on the experience of the fifth and sixth enlargement wave, the dominant assumptions within EU studies emphasise the asymmetrical nature of the relations between the EU and the countries pursuing membership. Due to the presupposed stronger position of the European Union, the external pressure of the EU is considered by many EU scholars as essential in determining the behaviour of the applicant states (Vachudova, 2005; Papadimitriou and Gateva, 2009). The relations between the EU and prospective members are viewed as transactional and as leading to compliance with the EU formal and informal requirements (Grabbe, 2003). This was labelled as the logic of conditionality, which in fact entails that in this asymmetrical relationship the countries willing to join the European Union will comply with the existing norms and will adopt the relevant rules, because they consider EU membership as the ultimate award (Schimmelfennig et al, 2005: 31). Since the early 2000s two basic theoretical approaches embedded in the institutionalist paradigm – the external incentive model (EIM) and the diffusion model (DM) – have dominated EU studies research to analyse the specific dynamics between the EU and prospective and new members.