Is Europeanisation through Conditionality Sustainable? Lock-in of Institutional Change after EU Accession

Abstract

Is the impact of EU accession conditionality sustainable after target states achieve EU membership? Although accession changes the incentive structure for compliance, this article suggests that a lock-in of pre-accession institutional changes can contribute to their persistence even after the EU's sanctioning power weakens. A case study of gender equality institutions in five new member states suggests that a combination of government partisan preferences and veto players explains whether such lock-in occurs. If institutional change no longer fits government preferences, the key condition is the presence of veto players who can lock in institutional change. Rather than impairing Europeanisation, as the literature often assumes, domestic veto players can thus foster it. However, the case study also finds that veto players can lock in non-compliance too if conditionality was unsuccessful, and it appears easier to reverse earlier institutional change than to redress the lack of it.

Acknowledgements

For extremely helpful comments, I would like to thank Sabina Avdagic, Tanja Börzel, Thomas Risse, Carina Sprungk, and two anonymous reviewers. I gratefully acknowledge a fellowship at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg.

Notes

1. However, the inadequate situation at the moment of accession in some cases, such as the poor state of the judiciary and corruption in Bulgaria and Romania, means that the picture remains bleak even without any backsliding (Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012).

2. Pre-accession directives are those with a transposition deadline prior to, and still in force on, 1 May 2004. Post-accession directives have transposition deadlines between 1 May 2004 and 31 December 2009 (directives with a later transposition deadline could distort the share of infringements/total infringements due to the time lag between opening a case and issuing a Reasoned Opinion).

3. Intuitively, it would appear that we might observe a lock-in as long as the share of infringements of pre-accession directives to total pre-accession directives is lower than the share for post-accession directives. However, all member states have a lower share of infringements of old directives (suggesting that it is always more difficult to transpose new legislation, since for example infringements due to late transposition are time-sensitive). Table 2 therefore calculates the ratio of pre-accession shares to post-accession shares.

4. Since the transposition deadline for Directive 2002/73 was October 2005, the new members did not need to establish the institution upon accession, although some governments chose to do so (rather than implementing its precursor, Directive 76/207, and then having to implement the amendments soon after).

5. This finding also broadly matches the results of Schwellnus et al.'s (2009) analysis of minority rights after accession.