The European Union, conditionality and corruption control during enlargement: the Czech Republic, Romania and Macedonia

Despite the European Union’s (EU) efforts to curb corruption during recent accession rounds, it remains a serious problem. The main aim of this thesis is to examine (1) the conditions under which the EU has been able to influence the control of corruption in candidate countries, (2) the reasons for the limited EU impact on corruption control and (3) the role of domestic factors in helping/ hindering the control of corruption. This thesis looks in particular at the control of corruption in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on theoretical insights from the Europeanization and corruption literatures, it is argued that while the EU can influence the adoption of anti-corruption laws and the formal creation of institutions of accountability, effective EU conditionality and sustainable positive changes to better control corruption are predominantly dependent on case-specific factors. The thesis adopts a comparative approach and traces the EU accession process related to anti-corruption in three Central and Eastern European countries: the Czech Republic, Macedonia and Romania. It employs documentary analysis and semi-structured elite interviews with over 100 national and EU experts on corruption and enlargement. The thesis uses Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier’s (2005) external incentives model to examine the determinacy of anti-corruption conditions, the size and speed of rewards awarded by the EU if anti-corruption conditions were fulfilled and the credibility of threats and promises delivered by the EU when anti-corruption criteria failed to be adopted and/or implemented, as well as the size of the adoption costs for domestic political elites in the three cases. The final argument is that the EU’s ability to influence corruption control during accession is dependent on the size of the domestic costs for political elites to implement reforms compared with the benefits of joining the EU.