ADMINISTRATIVE CONVERGENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF EU ACCESSION NEGOTIATIONS: STRUCTURAL NECESSITY OR CREEPING POLITICAL CRITERIA?

Accession negotiations between the EU and the various Candidate countries was-divided-into 31 - 35 negotiating chapters, a significant number of which deals, partially or exclusively, with the alignment of the public administration and the administrative procedures of the respective states to certain EU standards. At the political level, a significant political requirement of the Copenhagen criteria refers to the rule of law, as an important feature of the state structure for candidates. The presentation explores whether the EU demands for administrative alignment of the candidate states is a necessary step towards full accession by ensuring compatibility of their public administration systems to a set of EU standards, or it amounts to an additional, covert way of imposing additional political terms that would otherwise be deemed unacceptable interference to the internal affairs of independent states, in order to find out the nature of the various EU demands either as structural necessities or as political measures imposing certain patterns of behavior in the internal political scene of the respective states, not only during the enlargement process, but also in the framework of the ENP.