On 29 April 2011, the Center for European Enlargement Studies at CEU organized a one-day conference dedicated to the reflection on the past experiences and future challenges to the European Union’s good governance promotion mechanisms in Central and Eastern Europe. The event was part of an accompanying research project funded by the Jean Monnet Lifelong Learning Programme.

The project aims to extract and synthesize knowledge from past and present European experiences of promoting good governance by focusing on related developments in Central and Eastern Europe. The goal is to investigate the extent to which the EU has been able to trigger the introduction of certain good governance practices in this region. The main question is whether transnational norm transfer has taken place in these countries through any identifiable “EU effect” and if so, to what extent and under which domestic and external conditions?

Four early career researchers presented their working papers at the conference in individual panels. Each paper addressed a different aspect of the main theme and was discussed by two senior scholars having outstanding expertise in the corresponding field. A roundtable discussion on the EU’s good governance promotion mechanisms concluded the event, which reflected both on the current policy toolbox and on the present and future challenges it has to face.

In the first panel, Elsa Tulmets (Research Fellow at the Institute of International Relations and Research Associate at CEFRES in Prague) presented her working paper, which is an ambitious attempt to take stock of the academic literature on norm transfer, social learning and good governance promotion in connection with the recent and ongoing EU enlargement processes and the policies of the EU in the Eastern neighbourhood. Her paper is a theoretically informed, thorough and critical evaluation of the performance of the EU's toolbox for promoting good governance. In her paper Elsa also highlighted that the evolution of the academic literature often followed the developments of the relations between the EU and the candidate countries and the Eastern neighbours. In short, certain parallelism can be observed between the academic debates and the real life political developments. Elsa argued that in order to be able to analyze the processes of European norm transfers in a more nuanced way, the top-down and the bottom-up approaches should be integrated. In other words, a better link has to be established between the external (EU) factors and the domestic ones as they co-determine whether norm transfer takes place on the domestic level and if so, to what extent.

The first discussant, László Bruszt (Professor of Sociology, European University Institute, Florence) emphasized that the scope of EU enlargement studies has to be enlarged as well. First of all, most of the literature focuses on the current Eastern experiences and the time perspective of these works is also very narrow. It may be useful to expand the time horizon and also the geographical scope to include more cases into the analysis. For instance, how do the post-WWII institutional impositions on Germany and Japan compare to the normative impositions of the Eastern enlargement? Second, besides the currently prevailing approaches rooted in International Relations theory, perspectives of Comparative Political Economy should also be brought into the discussion as this would allow for a better analysis between the link of political and economic integration. On a similar note, he pointed to the significance of transnational market-making through the emergence of transnational integration regimes, which involved the creation of new rules and institutions through the extension of domestic markets. This is a relevant aspect to account for in EU enlargement studies as well. Finally, he argued that there had been too much focus on the “pupils” and much less on the “teacher”, on the EU itself. It would thus be appropriate to raise questions such as why, how and to what extent has the EU been able to learn from its own good governance promotion mechanisms?

The second discussant, Nicole Wichmann (Senior Researcher at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies, University of Neuchâtel) agreed with Elsa that there was a new conviction about the significance of domestic factors in determining the scope and depth of norm transfer processes. The EU has also recognized that the good governance promotion policies need to be adapted to the specific domestic circumstances, thereby making this toolbox less hierarchical. At the same time she pointed to the methodological difficulties that arise once external and domestic factors are linked together to explain domestic outcomes of norm transfer: causality may run in both directions as these factors jointly determine the outcomes but at the same time they may also interact with each other.

A lively discussion followed the discussants’ remarks, which revolved around the context and conditions under which institutional transfers may take place thereby generating domestic changes and compliance to external rules and norms. The participants agreed that if the EU wanted to export itself outside its geographical boundaries without offering membership perspectives (which would imply strong conditionality for the domestic level to adapt) to the targeted countries, then it had to rely on the power of transnational networks, markets and other, less direct mechanisms.

In the second panel Dominik Tolksdorf (Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussels) presented his paper on how the EU has promoted good governance practices in Bosnia-Herzegovina and how successful this promotion has been so far. The case is interesting in many aspects: as Dominik showed, state-building and EU member state-building processes have simultaneously characterized the development of the country since the Dayton agreement. The EU therefore has had a considerably strong leverage over domestic processes, thus one would expect substantial compliance to EU rules and practices also in terms of good governance. However, as Dominik demonstrated on the fields of police reform and fight against organized crime, the incoherence of EU policies towards Bosnia and the existing contradictions between the approaches of the different EU bodies present in the country prevented substantially deep changes. The expected strong transformative power of the EU has been diluted by incoherent policies and frequent political negotiations over the rule implementation processes. However, it also remains a question that to what extent can the EU’s pre-accession instruments work in such post-war, deeply divided societies?

Nicole Lindstrom (Professor of Political Science, University of York), the first discussant, argued that the distinction between state-building and member state-building processes might not be that straightforward because they were mostly interrelated dimensions. Furthermore, she pointed to the necessity of discussing transnational non-EU actors as well that had potentially high influence over the domestic level in Bosnia. In addition, she suggested that Dominik should discuss in more detail the problem of local ownership and local input regarding norm adoption and rule-taking: in her opinion, the viewpoint of Bosnian authorities would probably alter the picture and would contribute to the argument of the paper as well.

The second discussant, Florian Trauner (Faculty Member at the Institute for European Integration Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences) drew the attention of the audience to the rich empirical material in the paper but at the same time he suggested a stronger positioning of the work in the literature on social learning, norm transfer and Europeanization. He also recommended Dominik to simplify his current analytical framework in order to make it more accessible to non-academic audiences as well. The open discussion after the presentation focused on the problem that in spite of the massive EU efforts and the huge amount of resources committed, policy outcomes in Bosnia are rather poor. Wade Jacoby (Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University, USA) added that in several fields the EU might not matter as much as one would expect like in the case of fighting against corruption. Kataryna Wolczuk (Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham) emphasized that looking only at the EU as an international rule builder is a bit of isolation and she suggested also taking the perspectives of Legal Studies into account as that discipline has a lot to say about transnational rule implementation and about issues related to the rule of law.

The third presenter of the day was Igor Lyubashenko (Research Fellow at the Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation, Warsaw), who, from the viewpoint of good governance practices, compared the recent trajectories of Ukraine and Moldova in the fields of public administration, judiciary reform and fight against corruption. As he argued, the two countries shared rather similar legacies and had been exposed to comparable external EU influences, but conditions in Ukraine were more favourable for adopting good governance measures. This is also due to the fact that Moldova is an authoritarian state while Ukraine is considered a democracy. However, as Igor argued, Moldova recently demonstrated a better record in adopting good governance measures in the above policy fields than Ukraine, which is puzzling. He argued that this difference to a great extent can be contributed to the presence (or absence) of domestic political will to change existing circumstances and to the different domestic perceptions of the EU and its policies that also determined the level of local receptivity to EU demands.

The first discussant of the paper, Julia Langbein (Post-doctoral Fellow, Freie Universität Berlin) expressed her doubts about political will being responsible for the divergent domestic outcomes especially that in her view this did not reveal the reason for the non-adoption of policies. She suggested that the paper should be more embedded theoretically in order to allow for a more convincing explanation about the conditions under which policy change becomes possible. She also advised Igor to include more empirical measures in the paper to strengthen his argument. Nicu Popescu (Senior Research Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations) the second discussant, formulated a similar opinion. He also added that the puzzling outcome that Moldova seems to perform better than Ukraine in adopting EU-induced good governance measures may also be due to the fact that Moldovan state institutions are weak and lack sufficient capacity to assess, calculate and prioritize alternative policy options. Finally, he mentioned that the role of Russia especially in the case of Ukrainian domestic politics is highly significant and should be accounted for.

The last presenter of the day was Dóra Győrffy (Associate Professor, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Hungary), who compared the Europeanization of budgetary management in Hungary and Slovakia. Since both countries have been exposed to comparable EU influences and have similarly struggled with fiscal imbalances and weak budgetary institutions, one would expect them to converge regarding budgetary discipline. However, they differ significantly: Slovakia introduced the euro in 2009 while Hungary has been suffering from the consequences of loose fiscal policies. As Dóra argued, EU membership also offered external credibility for Hungary and this is what made the postponement of necessary fiscal adjustments possible. In contrast, the very same EU influences provided both the incentives and the assistance for Slovakia to strengthen its budgetary management. The author explained that this puzzling divergence in the outcomes could be contributed to the differences in leadership commitments and consensus, which were crucial in cases of soft policy transfer where the EU did not have enforcement capacity and the member states also demonstrated inconsistency between acknowledged norms and actual behaviour.

Wade Jacoby, the first discussant, agreed with Dóra’s findings but he suggested a more unconventional formulation of both the problem and the argument. In essence, the EU seems to assist countries in doing what they already want to do: instead of observing convergence and isomorphic rule transfer, the EU rather appears as an enabling factor for the member states and facilitates domestic aspirations. In short, the EU’s promotion of good governance leads to contradictory outcomes that are sometimes worse than they would have been without the EU’s presence or influence. Wade also raised the general question of whether there was an identifiable EU contribution to budgetary management.

In line with the previous remarks, László Csaba (Professor of International Political Economy, Central European University, Budapest), the second discussant, also highlighted the irony of EU budgetary rules not binding on either the “civilized” (i.e. old member states) or the “non-civilized” (i.e. new member states). He also outlined several puzzles that emerged from Dóra’s research. The first one is the issue of fiscal irresponsibility – what makes governments so irresponsible if growing public debt is a serious burden at anytime and anywhere not only in the contemporary period of global economic crisis? Second, he reminded of “the dog that did not bark”: how come that international capital markets did not punish the fiscally irresponsible countries in time even though they had been expected to do so? It follows from this point that international financial markets rather seem to follow perceptions and not reality. Finally, he emphasized the puzzle of diverging country behaviour under very similar external pressures and domestic conditions. This raises the question that under what conditions may rules and institutions deliver the expected results?

With the participation of the discussants of the working papers, the conference was concluded by a roundtable discussion moderated by Marie-Pierre Granger (Associate Professor, Central European University, Budapest). Kataryna Wolczuk’s keynote speech introduced the roundtable in which she addressed several key issues concerning EU external actions and good governance promotion mechanisms. She claimed that with the enlargement process the EU was promoting its own values and interests and in that sense the role it played was not too different from other international organizations promoting good governance. However, since the EU reconciles many sets of interest, it does not and cannot represent a single set of them. This affects the quality and comprehensiveness of EU laws and is also reflected in the low specificity and high selectivity of the legal and policy templates that the EU offers to candidates and external partners – these templates cannot provide real policy guidance for them. In this respect, the Lisbon Treaty can be considered as a masterpiece of opacity. A further problem is that the European Neighbourhood Policy is a low-cost, low-risk policy, which decreases its credibility and also causes its low receptivity in the target countries. Finally, Kataryna Wolczuk raised the question whether the EU was well-equipped to confront these challenges? In her view, the EU has an impressive range of instruments and mechanisms that need to be adapted to local needs by accounting for the demand side as well, which the target countries represent. The key issue for the future is to maximize domestic receptivity of EU good governance promotion mechanisms as that would also facilitate processes of norm transfer.

The discussion following the keynote speech was very lively. First, Nicu Popescu expressed his view that there was a fundamental problem with the model of EU rule transfer. He claimed that the EU was not as attractive as it used to be even a decade ago. Currently, the countries of the Eastern neighbourhood are stuck in transition and do not experiment with adopting good governance practices. Their problems are mainly domestic and the EU is unable to outweigh those factors. Julia Langbein reminded that the EU was not necessarily the primary driver of domestic change: in those policy fields that are strongly influenced by market actors and interests domestic change may take place even without the involvement of the EU. However, progress may be low in those areas where markets are not directly involved and this may be true also for certain aspects of good governance.

Wade Jacoby added to the discussion that since the post-WWII occupation of Germany and Japan was successful, the US now mistakenly believes that it knows how to promote democracy and good governance. To draw a comparison, in the context of enlargement, the EU is now on the way to commit all the mistakes that the US has done in the past. Joining the debate, László Bruszt reminded about an important distinction, namely that unlike the US did to Germany and Japan, the EU did not occupy the Central and Eastern European countries. The Eastern enlargement was also a process of massive transnationalization and in that sense the EU was just one of several transnational actors driving domestic change. Kataryna Wolczuk added that if the EU had offered more favourable trading regimes in the Europe Agreements, then EU membership would not have been as much attractive as it actually was to Central and Eastern Europe. This might have facilitated domestic change in the post-communist candidate countries as they were early on aspiring to become EU members.

Gergely Romsics (Senior Research Fellow, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, Budapest) called the attention to the significance of a moral dilemma: the EU’s commitment to promote good governance is based on the assumption that the EU knows it better than those states that are the target of this policy. What if this assumption is wrong, also because the EU is unable to provide highly specified, unambiguous policy templates? In line with this argument, Nicole Lindstrom reminded about the domestic adoption costs that accompany the adoption of any measures of good governance. However, she also added that adoption cost was a very vague concept and it was also largely context-specific. Still, it should be determined who has won and who has lost with the enlargement.

Concluding the roundtable, László Csaba argued that the adoption costs, to which Nicole referred, need to be specified in a much more rigorous way: what is a cost and for whom is hard to determine and a lot depends on the conceptualization. Regarding good governance promotion, one has to bear in mind that the EU is not a state and it can only promote what is included in the acquis. However, the acquis is the lowest common denominator of multiple interests and for this reason the provision of legal and policy templates remain a too complex issue. In turn, opacity may be the answer to this problem.

All things considered, the roundtable discussion and the papers presented at the conference provided a thorough and critical overview of those problems and challenges that the EU has to face concerning its external actions and the promotion of good governance. The participants raised several issues that policy makers need to resolve and that may be subject to further academic research as well. In every respect, the conference accomplished its goals and it offered a valuable contribution to the discussion on EU good governance promotion mechanisms.