Between 1989 and 2004, the EU's conditionality for membership transformed Central and East Europe. The EU had enormous potential power over the whole range of domestic politics in the candidate countries. However, the EU was able to use that power at a few key points in the process leading to their accession. The EU's long-term influence worked primarily through soft power and through voluntary rather than coercive means. During the membership preparations, the EU built many different routes of influence into the candidate countries' domestic policy-making through 'Europeanization'. The Central and East Europeans voluntarily took on the Union's norms and methods, guided by the European Commission, in a massive transfer of policies and institutions. However, the EU missed important opportunities to effect change as well. The EU's Transformative Power explores in detail how the EU used its influence to control the movement of people across Europe, through both coercive use of conditionality and voluntary methods of Europeanization.

An original study into how the EU influenced Central and East European candidate countries prior to membership The book brings together the insights of the literatures on Europeanization and postcommunist transition Author's reputation and standing in the field current advisor to the EU Commissioner for Enlargement

Autorentext
Heather Grabbe is Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, Brussels, Belgium. From 2004 to 2009 she was senior advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, responsible in his cabinet for the Balkans and Turkey. Before joining the commission, she was deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, the London-based think tank, where she published widely on EU enlargement and other European issues. Previous research posts include Chatham House, the European University Institute and Wolfson College, Oxford University.

Klappentext

Between 1989 and 2004, the EU's conditionality for membership had major transformative effects in Central and East Europe. The author analyses how that transformation worked in practice. She explores how the EU used its bargaining power coercively at certain key points in the membership preparations, but concludes that its primary method was soft power, through 'Europeanizing' the candidates into its norms and methods. This book explores in detail how the EU used its influence to control the movement of people, through both conditionality and Europeanization.

Inhalt
Abstract
About the Author
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowldgements
Introduction
Accession Conditionality and its Implications
Europeanization, Negotiations and Influence
Routes of Europeanization and Constraints on EU Influence
The Receiving End: Politics in the Candidate Countries
Free Movement of Persons in the Single Market
Movement of Persons under Schengen
Explaining How EU Influence Worked
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index