University of Twente Student Theses

A wider Europe without the golden carrot of membership: A Study on the Effectiveness of EU Political Conditionality in Providing Political Reforms in Morocco and Ukraine under the European Neighbourhood Policy

Kanjaa, Kaoutar (2010) A wider Europe without the golden carrot of membership: A Study on the Effectiveness of EU Political Conditionality in Providing Political Reforms in Morocco and Ukraine under the European Neighbourhood Policy.

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Abstract:	The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is largely modeled on the enlargement process as it uses the same framework and political instrument, namely EU political conditionality. EU political conditionality refers to a set of conditions defined by the EU which have to be met by the target state in order for it to join the Union or profit from her assistance. This political instrument seemed to be successful for the EU enlargement process, but whether it also will gain success for the ENP is still the question. According to studies on the ENP, its prospects for success are minor since the EU does not offer the neighbouring countries the golden carrot of membership and this is seen as the cause for the ENP to fail. But also other conditions have an impact on the effectiveness of EU political conditionality. The purpose of this thesis is to explore a number of these conditions to explain EU political conditionality’s effectiveness under the ENP. I used the conditions of Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier’s EU external governance models to explain the degree of compliance of two ENP participants, namely Morocco and Ukraine. The first model, the external incentives model is a rationalist bargaining model and presupposes the importance of ‘credibility of EU accession’ and ‘domestic adoption costs’ for conditionality to be effective. The second model, the social learning model follows core tenets of social constructivism, namely ‘commitment to Europe’, ‘societal salience’ and ‘economic interdependence’, which are assumed to be important for the process of EU rule transfer and adoption. Studies on the impact of EU political conditionality in the pre-accession show that a ‘credible EU accession’ and ‘low domestic adaptation costs’ have been individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for compliance (Schimmelfennig et al. 2003). Whether this is also the case for the studied ENP countries is explored in present study with the use of a mix of methods
Item Type:	Essay (Master)
Faculty:	BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:	88 social and public administration
Programme:	European Studies MSc (69303)
Link to this item:	https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/60284
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