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Governing EU accession in transition countries: The role of non-state actors

Acta Politica volume 45, pages 158–182 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

Accession appears to be both a blessing and a curse to transition countries. On the one hand, EU membership supports their transformation from authoritarian regimes with centralized planning economies into liberal democracies with market economies. On the other hand, the accession countries face great difficulties in restructuring their economic and political institutions in order to meet the conditions for EU membership. The systematic involvement of non-state actors in the adoption of and adaptation to EU requirements was thought to be a remedy for the problems of European Enlargement towards ‘weak’ transition countries. Companies and civil society organizations could provide the governments of the accession countries with important resources (money, information, expertise and support) that are necessary to make EU policies work. The article explores the role of non-state actors in governing the double challenge of transition and accession. Focusing on the field of environmental policy, we seek to find out to what extent accession has empowered non-state actors by giving them a voice in the adoption of and adaptation to the EU's green acquis. Our study on the implementation of EU environmental policies in Poland, Hungary and Romania shows that accession left little room for the involvement of non-state actors into the policy process. The article argues that both state and non-state actors in transition countries were often too weak to make cooperation work during the accession period. The double weakness of transition countries and a political culture hostile to public involvement seriously constrained the empowering of non-state actors by ‘Europeanization through accession’.

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Notes

  1. Inter alia Marin, 1990; Marin and Mayntz, 1991; Rhodes, 1997.

  2. OECD countries spend between 1 and 2 percent of their GDP on environmental policy cf, http://www.uni-mannheim.de/edz/pdf/dg4/ENVI106_EN.pdf, last access 31 May 2007.

  3. Interview, Public Official, Ministry of Environment and Water Management, Budapest, 5 December 2006.

  4. Interview, Public Official, General Inspectorate of Environment Protection and Water, Budapest, 3 December 2007.

  5. Interview, Consultant, Budapest, 29 November 2007.

  6. See Andonova, 2004 for a similar argument.

  7. Interview, Researcher, environmental think tank, Wroclaw, 14 October 2005.

  8. Interview, Public Official, Polish Environmental Ministry, Warsaw, 11 October 2006.

  9. The Polish Steel Association was also among the very few Polish industrial association, which had the capacity to participate also on the European level in the ‘Seville Process’ (Koutalakis, 2008). Interview, Representative of the Polish Steel Association, Warsaw, 23 October 2005).

  10. Interview, Representative of the Chamber for Chemical Industry, Warsaw, 18 October 2006.

  11. Interview Consultancy, Warsaw, 9 October 2006; Interview Consultancy, Warsaw, 16 October 2006; Interview, Public Official, Polish Environmental Ministry, Warsaw, 11 October 2006.

  12. Interview, Public Official, Ministry of Environment and Water Management 15 January 2007; Interview, Consultancy, Bucharest, 12 January 2007.

  13. Interview, Public Official, Ministry of Environment and Water Management (now MMDD), Bucharest, 23 November 2005; Interview, Consultancy, Bucharest, 12 January 2007.

  14. Népszabadság Online: Natura 2000: késik a támogatás. (Natura 2000: Compensation delayed), www.nol.hu/cikk/420049 (last access 21 February 2007). Interview, Environmental NGO representative, Budapest, 5 December 2006

  15. Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Budapest, 8 April 2008.

  16. The number of legal cases concerning NATURA 2000 designation has doubled each year since 2006 (Interview, Public Official, Environmental Protection Agency, Budapest, 28 March 2008).

  17. Interview, Environmental NGO representative, Budapest, 22 March 2008; Interview, Public Servant, Budapest, 28 March 2008

  18. The coalition included WWF Polska, the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds (OTOP), the Naturalist Club and ‘Salamandra’.

  19. Interview, Public Official, Ministry of Environment, Warsaw, 12 October 2005; Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Warsaw, 12 October 2005. See also http://www.wwf.pl/projekty/eng/natura_2000_shadow_en.php, last access 12 June 2007.

  20. Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Warsaw, 12 October 2005; Interview, Researcher, Institute for Sustainable Development, Warsaw, 18 October 2006.

  21. Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Brussels, 23 November 2007.

  22. Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Bucharest, 11 July 2008.

  23. Interview, Phare Project Coordinator, Sibiu, 16/06/2008, Interview, Environmental NGO Representative, Oxford, 10 September 2007.

  24. Interview, Public Official, Ministry of Environment and Water Management (now MMDD), Bucharest, 26 November 2005.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sonja Guttenbrunner, whose research built the basis for our study on Poland. We are also grateful to Miranda Schreurs, JoAnn Carmin, Guy Peters, Guido Schwellnus and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The research is based on the project ‘Coping with Accession. New Modes of Governance and Eastern Enlargement, part of the Integrated Project ‘New Modes of Governance in Europe’, funded by the 6th Framework Programme of the European Union (CIT1-CT-2004-506392).

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  1. Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Ihnestr. 22, Berlin, 14195, Germany

    Tanja A Börzel

  2. German University of Administrative Sciences, Speyer, PO Box 1409, Speyer, D-67324, Germany

    Aron Buzogány

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Börzel, T., Buzogány, A. Governing EU accession in transition countries: The role of non-state actors. Acta Polit 45, 158–182 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2009.26

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Keywords

  • Europeanization
  • EU enlargement
  • civil society
  • environmental policy