Speeding up or Slowing down? Lessons from the Last Enlargement on the Dynamics of Enlargement-Driven Reform

This article highlights the lessons from the European Union's (EU's) eastern enlargement relevant for Turkey. The EU's approach to candidates, developed during the last enlargement, was founded on asymmetry, objectivity and conditionality, with the latter evolving as the key policy tool. Clearly, some of the tools and rules of the previous enlargement cannot work as well with Turkey. The article examines the mechanisms underlying the success of conditionality and sketches some of the scope conditions needed for it to work in Turkey's case. Ultimately, the success of conditionality will depend on EU credibility and the preferences of domestic actors, which are more heterogeneous than in Central and Eastern European states.