Europeanization and Effective Democracy in Romania and Bulgaria

By 2007, Romania and Bulgaria registered the slowest progress in terms of transparency, accountability and rule enforcement among Central and Eastern European candidate countries. This article reviews the impact of EU political conditionality since the 1993 Europe Agreements. It relies upon primary data to examine the variation of corruption trends between 1993 and 2007 in the context of EU led reforms. This article argues that national elite tactics of window dressing and backtracking led to little change in terms of effective democracy. This article finds that reforms due to Enlargement-led Europeanization had not impacted upon public perception on corruption during the pre-accession period.