Chapter 2. Existing Explanations on EU Enlargement
2.3 Corruption and EU Enlargement
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Another important determinant of EU accession is about cultural identity. Grabbe and Sedelmeier (2010) argue that the more the non-member state identifies with EU, the more likely for members to endorse accession for the given country. Katchanovski (2011) and Schimmelfennig (2002) argue that cultural and religious affinity might affect EU
enlargement. Both authors have classified states as Western, Slavic-Orthodox, and Islamic states, based on the clash of civilization theory (Huntington 1996). Based on Huntington’s preposition that the foundation of European Community rests on European culture and the West Christianity they share, Schimmelfennig (2002, 600) argues that countries who are classified as Slavic-Orthodox and Islamic will be restricted to become members of EU and NATO regardless if they are liberal states and are located in Europe (Huntington 1993, 27;
Schimmelfennig 2002, 600). Whereas, Katchanovski’s (2011) position relies on the clash of civilization theory that countries with majority Protestant and Catholic post-communist populations are more likely to become members of the EU, compared to countries which have predominantly Muslim or Orthodox Christian populations.
2.3 Corruption and EU Enlargement
While many existing studies examine the economic, political, and cultural factors for explaining EU accession, few empirical studies have examined the impact of corruption. In fact, after the four enlargement in 2007, the issue of corruption has attracted more attention by the EU when evaluating non-member states’ qualification for EU membership. To fill the empirical gap in the literature, I aim to focus on how corruption shapes the prospect of EU accession. Specifically, I argue that a non-member country is less likely to join the EU after 2007 if it suffers a high level of political corruption.
Previous studies regarding corruption and EU enlargement have largely focused on the control of corruption after accession (Kartal 2014). Vachudova (2009) shows that countries that became EU members in 2004 and 2007 exhibit an increasing trend of corruption, with an exception of Estonia and Slovenia. In fact, after the fifth enlargement, Bulgaria and Romania became the center of attention due to corruption issues (Kartal 2014; Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012). In 2008, EU reacted by freezing several funds for these two countries in order to expect their measures for combating corruption (IISD 2008). More importantly, Vachudova (2009, 44) argues that after the fifth enlargement, member states had
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“enlargement fatigue” which made them show less willingness to accept new members. Post-communist countries that were preparing to join EU between 1997 and 2002 faced many challenges from the conditionality that was set for their accession (Grabbe 1999; 2002).
Rule of law conditionality was limited and started to get more emphasized on the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, since these two countries were characterized with weak capacity of the state and high political costs domestically, that showed a record of poor rule of law compliance compared to other countries of CEE that became members of EU in 2004 (Noutcheva and Bechev 2008; Spendzharova and Vachudova 2012). In fact, the issue of fighting against corruption did not appear to be as significant before 2007. It is true that Bulgaria and Romania used to have serious corruption problems before obtaining the EU membership, but for political reasons, EU failed to address this issues in its reports.
Vachudova’s (2009, 54) study even shows that Bulgaria’s levels of corruption increased when the country was nearing the conclusion of negotiations and EU accession.
Warner (2007, 28-30) argues that political corruption is very much present in the European Union itself; politicians and companies get involved in corruption acts within the institutional arrangements of member states, the union and the international financial institutions.
However, the conditionality for the Rule of law has changed since the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007; the strategies of EU enlargement have further transformed the
conditionality related to the rule of law into a more strict and sound system compared to forms of conditionality for previous accessions. Compared to previous accessions, where some countries had to settle important political and rule of law issues after obtaining membership, now applicant countries have to substantially settle those issues before being considered to become members of the union (Zhelyazkova et al. 2018, 24).
Compared to the EU member states, the Western Balkan countries show relatively poor performance in terms of control of corruption (Lilyanova 2017, 2). Widespread corruption in Western Balkan countries has become one main challenge for EU accession. Since corruption is believed to undermine the economic development and good governance of states, Western Balkan countries are urged to undertake reform and show incentives to fight corruption, which has become a key requirement for EU accession (Lilyanova 2017, 3-4).
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While Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo remain non-members, they all have intentions to join the EU. However, the challenges these countries are facing include fighting corruption and organized crimes, and building effective public administrations and independent judiciary, and the EU is eventually developing the tool to address these challenges by learning from past experiences of EU enlargements (Vachudova 2009, 59-60). One important EU institution that was created to help combat corruption for future applicant countries is the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX).
It is true that fighting against corruption is not part of the acquis for accession, so it is only indirectly related with the formal criteria for accession. However, EU member states have applied their learned lessons from the 2004 and 2007 enlargements when it comes to the process of pre-accession concerning Western Balkan prospective members, but EU leverage for Western Balkan countries has been weakened since EU has been inconsistent to enforce requirements in order to push forward the pre-accession process and has lacked experience and expertise to use its leverage in strengthening the rule of law and fight against corruption (Pridham 2007; Vachudova 2014, 123-4). Therefore, the EU may come about to enforce higher standards for Western Balkan countries when it comes to strengthening the rule of law and fight against corruption (Kochenov 2008). In 2013, Croatia became the latest member of the Union and the first after the fifth enlargement. It serves as a showcase that EU has evolved its leverage on emphasizing the fight against corruption, reforms in judicial system and rule of law, as shown in the earlier process for Croatia’s accession.
The big difference in conditionality for Croatia compared to previous accessions is the innovation of “benchmarking” which enables European Commission to add certain condition before opening negotiations. Opening and closing of these benchmarks were set as condition for opening and closing negotiations on certain chapters. These benchmarks required
candidate country to take important reforms prior to accession and to adopt certain laws, strategies and action plans (Grubiša 2010; Šeperić 2011, Vachudova 2014). The number of chapters for Croatia increase from 31 to 35 compared fifth enlargement round. Croatia received 127 benchmarks, 23 were opening benchmarks in eleven chapters, and were 104 closing benchmarks in 31 chapters (Šeperić 2011). Closing benchmarks related to fight against corruption are part of Chapter 23 “Judiciary and Fundamental Rights”, particularly closing benchmark 5 which requires Croatia to show a track records with concrete results in
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investigation and court processes for cases related to corruption and organized crime, especially high level corruption cases. Whereas for closing benchmark 6, Croatia should show results in improving the laws related to conflict of interest and taking effective measures in fighting corruption.
In the pre-accession process for the CEE countries, all candidate countries had done
impressive progress to establish democracy, rule of law and market economy. Nevertheless, corruption in the post-communist transition for these countries have persisted. The EU Commission has made it clear that fighting against corruption is an important task that candidate countries need to take over in order to become members of EU, especially because it undermines the quality of democratic institutions and markets (Open Society Institute 2002, 16). Moreover, prevalent corruption is considered a threat to meeting EU accession
requirements, and it also undermines economic growth (Lilyanova 2017, 3).
However, for the eastern enlargement, the European Commission did not establish clear benchmarks for candidate countries to combat corruption. Therefore, there was no clear indication what benchmarks should be employed to assess the anti-corruption progress for candidate countries (Open Society Institute 2002, 22). However, after the accession of the CEE countries, the EU began to discuss new issues for the future EU accession. Learning from the past enlargement experiences, the EU started to pay more attention to anti-corruption efforts as a pre-accession leverage for the EU to make a change in approach to anti-corruption policies. This new approach introduces benchmarks and focuses on harmonizing legislation with international standards to provide more concrete results (Lilyanova 2017, 3).
Corruption became a mainstream practice for Western Balkan countries after experiencing armed conflicts and post-communist transition, the region was characterized with high levels of corruption (Lilyanova 2017, 3). Corruption in Western Balkan is considered of “systemic”
nature, it is characterized with state capture and it underpins states’ modes of operation . Patron-client relations have surged into fundamental institutions such as judiciary, law
enforcement and anti-corruption agencies (Marović, Prelec and Kmezić 2019, 27). According to Transparency International (2016, 4-6), the EU accession process has become a major mechanism for anti-corruption efforts for the aspiring countries of future enlargement of the EU; although some progress has been done, the efforts have not met the expected
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requirement. Key problems in terms of corruption in the region include: 1) institutional overlap in fighting and preventing corruption in Serbia and Kosovo; 2) limited cooperation between prosecution and police in Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia; and 3) poor understanding of complex corruption cases by prosecutors and judges in Albania and Kosovo (Transparency International 2016, 4).
Based on the above discussion, it makes sense that the level of corruption should be negatively associated with the probability of EU accession for the non-member states, in particular after 2007. It is because the EU has “learned the lessons” from Bulgaria and Romania that rampant corruption will undermine a country’s economy and democracy, and thus further hinder a better integration with the EU. In short, I generate my testable
hypothesis for empirical tests:
The reduction effect of corruption on EU accession after 2007 is stronger and significantly different from the reduction effect of corruption on EU accession before 2008.
To this hypothesis, I conduct a mixed-method approach for quantitative and qualitative analyses. For the quantitative analysis, I collected data for 19 European countries from 1990 to 2018 and examine the relationship between the level of corruption and the prospects of EU accession. For the qualitative analysis, I select Croatia and Kosovo for comparative case studies. There are three reason for this case selection:
The first reason is related to the similar past that these two countries share: both countries have experienced post-communist transition and armed conflict after the transition.
Moreover, both countries have experienced dubious market privatization process and high-profile corruption. After the Croatian War of Independence ended in 1995 and the Kosovo War ended in 1999, both countries were ruled by former military members. Croatia
experienced war profiteering from former military members involved in suspicious arm deals, and also some of them becoming very rich in a short amount of time (Grubiša 2010). In Kosovo, the problems with laws related declaration of assets and wealth and low political willingness to prosecute illegal accumulated wealth by public officials remains a serious issue (Sutaj and Canhasi 2015).
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Second, the financial investment and the expertise offered by the EU for Croatia and Kosovo to fight against organized crime and corruption have made the two countries a showcase of EU’s consistent efforts to push for fighting corruption. The EU has offered important
assistance for Croatia’s State Prosecutor's Office for the Suppression of Organized Crime and Corruption (USKOK) to effectively prosecute high-profile corruption cases. The most
expensive mission ever deployed by EU, European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo
(EULEX), has provided assistance to strengthen the rule of law and to fight organized crime and corruption in Kosovo. The case of Croatia is unique because the attention of corruption in pre-accession process were never as strongly emphasized for countries that joined the EU earlier. Despite the fact that Kosovo has not been recognized by some EU members (Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain), and only been considered as a potential candidate in the future, the enormous investment of the EULEX demonstrates that the EU has considered anti-corruption efforts seriously for future enlargement.
The third reason is that Croatia is a successful case in which fighting against corruption enhances the probability of obtaining EU membership, whereas Kosovo is a case that has not even been granted candidacy status but has been making great efforts for combating
corruption. For Croatia, the EU generated “benchmarks” where fighting against corruption was seen as pre-condition for opening negotiations, and Croatia had to take effective
measures in prosecuting corruption before the negotiations for accession opened. Whereas for Kosovo, the anti-corruption performance has been used as a leverage for visa liberation. The comparative analyses will illustrate the mechanism about how corruption affects the
prospects of EU accession.
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