Main

Eline De Ridder

Abstract

During the Eastern enlargement process of the European Union (EU), the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) were supported by the Union in terms of combating corruption issues. This was seen as a key step in their transformation towards liberal democracy and eventual accession to the EU.  

 

This article questions the extent of influence which the EU has had in terms of dealing with problems of corruption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, both during and after their accession to the Union. It is noted that during the accession process the EU utilised a number of instruments to support accession states, such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia, fight corruption. Regardless of these incentives, the corruption records of both countries improved little by the time they acceded to the EU in 2004 and continues to be problematic in the post-accession era. It is suggested in this article that several dynamics, such as the absence of a clear and consistent policy from the EU and the importance of domestic politics in the acceding countries, help to explain why the fight against corruption in these two central European states has been and continues to be so weak.

Details

Article Keywords

EU Enlargement

Section
Research Articles
Article Copyright
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Material published in the JCER is done so under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence, with copyright remaining with the author.
  • Articles published online in the JCER cannot be published in another journal without explicit approval of the JCER editor.
  • Authors can 'self-archive' their articles in digital form on their personal homepages, funder repositories or their institutions' archives provided that they link back to the original source on the JCER website. Authors can archive pre-print, post-print or the publisher's version of their work.
  • Authors agree that submitted articles to the JCER will be submitted to various abstracting, indexing and archiving services as selected by the JCER.
Further information about archiving and copyright are contained within the JCER Open Access Policy.