The Politics of Conditionality (1997–2004)

Abstract

This chapter examines the emergence of new patterns of contention around the EU as post-socialist states entered formal EU accession negotiations and the attention shifted from a ‘return to Europe’ to ‘joining the EU’. Challenging accounts of the EU accession process as a largely technocratic process, this chapter argues for a more political and social understanding of this process. Tracing political debates over EU conditions in core EU policy areas (trade and competition policy), the chapter shows how ‘architects of transition’ in Estonia and Slovenia contested EU conditions when they were deemed to conflict with particular national welfare capitalist paths.