EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact

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1 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact Page 1 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact by Cenap ÇAKMAK The EU has introduced rules and standards of conditionality to promote democratization in candidate countries and to consolidate already existing democratic order in the member states. Conditionality has been effectively used by the EU for a long time to trigger a process of democratic transformation by offering the benefits of membership to the candidates and threatening member states with expulsion. There are many labels of defining various mechanisms of democratization through international factors. Conditionality is a developed form of policy designed to promote the desired aspect of transformation in the targeted country including democratization. Perceived benefits, such as political support, economic aid or membership in an organization are linked to the fulfillment of certain conditions which are supposed to serve democratization. Conditionality is easily exercised within the boundaries of a regional organization as it provides a forum to evaluate the process and lowers transaction costs. The Copenhagen Criteria is good example of conditionality. In Europe, conditionality works as a process in which the EU promises the candidate EU membership if candidate implements a wide range of reforms and transforms itself toward the EU model. The mechanism of conditionality involves the withdrawal of the benefits of accession and halting or slowing down the process, if candidate fails to implement the reforms. Since the conditionality works on a cost benefit analysis, the benefit must be greater than the cost of transformation. It must be stressed that calculating the tangible and intangible costs and benefits of each accession wave is extremely difficult due to complexity of EU s negotiation processes, of the negotiations themselves; the effects of the precedence created by past practices; and the spill-over from other negotiations. Thus, often there were cries of miscalculation and mistakes about many accessions. Successive enlargements are the best proof of the strong attraction which the Union continues to exert on its neighbors. And they have also been an effective way of extending democratic standards in the EU to more countries of the continent. The EU has reserved the probable membership as a potential reward for the candidates seeking full membership in the club, demonstrating its determination to secure visible transformation and change in the target country mainly in the field of human rights. This is actually a clear manifestation of the gradual transformation of the EU over the time from an institution focusing on the fair share of economic resources to a supranational body assuming a role to promote global norms across the continent. This role has been particularly visible in respect to its relations with the candidates; however, the rules produced for such promotion have also been considered applicable to the member states. The basic idea in pursuance of this policy has been dissemination and promotion of human rights and democratization that would create a vast sphere Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM) Mecidiyeköy Yolu Caddesi, No:10, Şişli -İSTANBUL bilgesam@bilgesam.org Phone: Fax: All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied, transmitted without the written permission of BILGESAM.

2 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact Page 2 of peace and stability. The EU often boasted to transcend the Westphalian norms, with a strong commitment to promotion of democracy and human rights across the globe. The rewards offered by conditionality must be credible. If the reward is very costly for the EU itself, if it is promised to be delivered far in the future, or if EU members disagree over whether the EU should ever bestow the reward, the expected utility of democratization for elites in the targeted state declines. Why assume the costs if benefits are uncertain? Another consideration is the strength and determinacy of conditionality, referring to the consistency of conditionality and the clarity and formality of rules. If conditionality is inconsistently applied or is otherwise weak, targeted states might doubt that policy change has bearing on EU policy and may thus try to obtain rewards without fulfilling EU conditions. If the rules are unclear, targeted states may try to take advantage of ambiguity and reform only partially or, particularly if they perceive that the EU is arbitrarily changing the rules, they may question the sincerity of the EU and lose confidence that they can ever meet EU conditions. 1 The applicants strive for EU membership since they perceive a range of benefits from it. These benefits could be economic, related to the internal market, or political, related to democratic stability and freedom. In addition, the applicants may also use the EU to implement a reform strategy domestically in order to facilitate modernization and reform of domestic institutions or policies. It is also an important feature of conditionality that the rewards are distributed unevenly. For small economies, economic rewards could be relatively substantial. The obligations of membership to be fulfilled by the applicant states are known as the EU s acquis communautaire. The candidate countries are asked to implement a set of bold reforms as well as modernizing policies that introduce radical changes to the institutions for the attainment of minimum standards by the EU. Conditionality is most effective when its pressures from outside meet favorable domestic conditions which must include elites wanting the change and have a strong hold on power; and a public that has a positive response. A successful transformation that is aimed by the conditionality depends on many exogenous and endogenous factors. For example, the domestic elites in a candidate, may be reluctant to do so, particularly if reforms such as democratization carry high adaptation costs that could jeopardize their hold on power, their conception of identity, or the integrity of the state. It is often claimed that the Turkish political and bureaucratic (military or civilian) elite had not been sincere in attaining the EEC/EU membership; because they were apprehensive about full democracy that would accompany the membership, as it would end their privileged position within the society. Thus the diversification of the elite as evidenced by the emergence of Islamist-conservative elite 2 and also the Kurdish elite created a more competitive political system. This has played an important role in getting Turkey closer to the standards of full membership. To implement the policy of promotion of human rights in candidate countries, the EU inserted several conditions that these countries have to meet before accession in its official documents. The most famous device that serves as an indicator to determine whether a candidate state is eligible for full membership is defined in the Conclusions of the Presidency at the European Council in Copenhagen held in June The Copenhagen Criteria required the candidates to achieve the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities (political criterion), and, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the European Union (economic criterion); capable of implementing the rules of the EU, that is, the ever expanding acquis communautaire. 1 Paul Kubicek, Political conditionality and European Union s cultivation of democracy in Turkey, Democratization, v. 18, n. 4 (2011): Nilüfer Göle, Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The making of Elites and Counter-Elites, Middle East Journal, v. 51, n. 1 (1997):

3 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact Page 3 These criteria were taken seriously by the EU during admission process; even conclusion of an agreement envisaging admission of a candidate country did not necessarily secure automatic admission. For instance, the Europe Agreement signed between the EU and Bulgaria on December 19, 1994 states that the agreement may be suspended in case the latter fails to observe the membership criteria with respect to human rights and democratization. 3 The adherence to this policy is closely associated with the EU s ambition to turn into a political actor with a strong identity making human rights issues a priority. Its reliance on the use of membership as political leverage has generated concrete outcomes as observed in the visible transformation of the candidate countries. Croatia was given a membership perspective only after it handed over a war crimes suspect (Ante Gotovina) to the Hague-based tribunal; and more recently, Serbia has captured, arrested and subsequently transferred prominent war crimes suspects Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic who played crucial roles in the commission of grave crimes during the civil war in Bosnia after the bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia. The Serbian authorities have done so in hope of being allowed to start up the accession negotiations. Political conditionality has been a dynamic process. For example, while previously only formal democracy criteria utilized initially with respect to Southern Europe a generation before into areas of substantive democracy, the scope of the conditions has evolved, in contrast to the more relaxed approach in previous enlargements, since 1993 to include new demands, like fighting corruption and addressing various socio-economic rights. Since 1993 EU conditionality has also come to specify the strengthening of state capacity, the independence of judiciaries, the pursuit of anti-corruption measures and the elaboration of a series of particular human and minority rights, successfully included handing over war criminals as well. But certain areas have remained outside the range of conditionality, notably, political parties 3 Europe Agreement Establishing an Association between the European Communities and their Member States and the Republic of Bulgaria, Article 7, Official Journal of the European Communities, No. L 358/3, 19 December and, civil society. 4 In the 1990s, the EU insisted that democratic standards are met before accession takes place. This new stricter requirement was influenced again on the EU s side by anxiety among member states over the future effects of enlargement on its own capacity and cohesion. 5 The candidate states were further discouraged by an unofficially stated requirement, absorption capacity, a politically motivated label for the union s supposed inability/ability to take in new members. This requirement basically states that the club cannot go on taking in new candidates without any regard to public opinion or their impact on current members. Yet this sudden burst of interest in such a vague idea is worrying. The absorption capacity, or as it has been renamed, the integration capacity is relevant to whether the EU can take in new members at a given moment or in a given period, without jeopardizing the political and policy objectives. In the enlargement process, according to Olli Rehn, the EU has the chance to stabilize the Balkan countries by locking them into integration. The problem inside, the EU should not threaten this historic possibility. Enlargement policy has to prove its transformative power in a region where states are weak and societies divided; too often in the 1990s, Brussels fiddled while the Balkans burned; this must not happen again. Conditionality works only if it is credible; if reformist leaders are to convince their public that it is worth making enormous efforts to meet the EU s conditions. As noted by Rehn, This means no sabbatical from our commitments to the countries of South-Eastern Europe, which constitute our consolidated enlargement agenda. Pacta sunt servanda is a fundamental European principle, 6 suggesting that the EU must and will honor its commitments. 4 Geoffrey Pridham, European Union Accession Dynamics and Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Future Perspectives, Government and Opposition, v. 41, n. 3 (2006): See, Geoffrey Pridham, Romania and EU membership in comparative perspective: A post-accession compliance problem? The case of political conditionality, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, v. 8, n. 2 (2007): Geoffrey Pridham, Change and Continuity in the European Union s Political Conditionality: Aims, Approach, and Priorities, Democratization, v. 14, n. 3 (2007):

4 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact Page 4 Where the state is seen as inauthentic or even an enemy, as was the case in the CEE countries, the low level of trust to the own state and elite also plays to the hand of the liberal elite who try to bind their country to the EU (this is also to case in Turkey for sizeable minorities). This mythical trust to the EU that it works better; it is more democratic and prosperous provided an important momentum for the EU membership. In many candidate countries, people did not believe in their own state, in their own capacities, in their own elites. They believed that it was better that the EU compel them match the norms of civilization because they themselves were unable to do so on their own. Frequently noted during the accession of CEE, negotiations for membership were distinctly asymmetrical, and so the political initiative over accession was largely held by the EU; and that went too for conditionality. As a whole, the scope for EU influence over conditionality has grown over time, with enlargement to CEE it was made an explicit condition for opening membership negotiation. The emphasis on universal principles is also evident in the Turkish reform process in the context of enlargement. In the enlargement to CEE, there were systematic references to the artificial division of Europe because of the Cold War. Enlargement was presented as an historical opportunity to remedy this unnatural division. The process was described as reuniting Europe. Thus it was assumed that Europe was united prior to the Cold War. Alas, Turkey had no historical place in this once united Europe. So allusions to a common European heritage are difficult to find when enlargement to Turkey is discussed.turkey is described as an important partner to Europe rather than as a natural part of the European family. The 1997 Luxembourg European Council launching the enlargement process included the central and eastern European countries (CEEC) but excluded Turkey. While at that point, this country felt it had been leapfrogged by the post-communist applicants.

5 EU Conditionality: Implementation and Impact Page 5 About BILGESAM Established in 2008, the Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGESAM) is one of the leading think tanks in Turkey. As a non-profit, non-partisan organization BILGESAM operates under the guidance of a group of well-respected academics from different disciplines, retired military generals and diplomats; and aims to contribute regional and global peace and prosperity. Closely following the domestic and international developments, BILGESAM conducts research on Turkey s domestic problems, foreign policy and security strategies, and the developments in the neighbouring regions to provide the Turkish decision-makers with practical policy recommendations and policy options. About Author Cenap Çakmak is professor of international law and head of international relations Department at Osmangazi University. He is a visiting researcher at T.M.C. Asser Institute: Center for Int l and European Law and international law fellow at the Wise Men Center for Strategic Studies (BILGE- SAM). He has published numerous articles and books on international law and international relations at home and abroad.