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West European Politics

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Enlargement, Institution-Building and the

EU's Administrative Capacity Requirement
A. Dimitrova
Version of record first published: 10 Jan 2011

To cite this article: A. Dimitrova (2002): Enlargement, Institution-Building and the EU's Administrative
Capacity Requirement, West European Politics, 25:4, 171-190

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 254wep08.qxd 11/10/02 09:59 Page 171

Enlargement, Institution-Building and the

EU’s Administrative Capacity Requirement

A N TO A N E TA D I M I T R O VA

Does the EU governance of the Central and Eastern European

candidate states unleash a process of Europeanisation? It is argued
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here that the current enlargement has generated its own mode of
governance, characterised by asymmetry and conditionality.
Enlargement governance has recently focused on developing
administrative capacity or ‘institution-building’, defined as the
creation of institutions necessary for the adoption and implementation
of the acquis communautaire. This article examines horizontal
administrative reform and attempts to define the conditions
determining the success or failure of the EU’s efforts in institution-
building. The absence of common EU rules and norms, and the
variation of domestic preferences about administrative reform, lead to
varying degrees of success in administrative institution-building.

From energy provided by nuclear power stations to the ability of bureaucrats

to implement laws – there is hardly a domestic issue that the ten-year-long
European Union (EU) enlargement process has not influenced in the
candidate states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Publics and élites
frustrated by the length of the process and the complexity of EU conditions
are told that the post-Communist states cannot join the Union until they have
rebuilt their institutions to ensure their effective functioning after accession.
Institution-building, defined by the EU as an activity developing the
administrative structures necessary for the adoption and implementation of
the acquis of the Union, has been, especially since 1997, a central pillar of
the pre-accession strategy implemented by the European Commission and
the candidate states. The development of administrative structures has also
become a condition for accession, since the candidates have to show that
they have sufficient administrative capacity to function in the EU’s multi-
level system of governance.1 Yet it is difficult for scholars, let alone
European Commission civil servants or EU politicians, to establish if and
when EU criteria have been successful in creating stable institutions, defined
as rules and norms that, on the one hand, perform effectively the functions

West European Politics, Vol.25, No.4 (October 2002), pp.171–190

PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
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172 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

for which they were designed and, on the other hand, are not contested or
ignored by actors. This article is an attempt to begin addressing this
important question: does EU enlargement governance lead to successful
institution-building?
The post-Communist period has witnessed numerous cases of
institutional design on a large scale. Crafting new democratic institutions has
been a challenge for domestic élites; as the countries of CEE are striving to
join the EU, the European Union has played a significant role in this process.
While the first part of the 1990s was dedicated to the building of central
democratic institutions, more recently the link between the creation of an
effective bureaucracy as a main instrument of the post-Communist state and
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European integration has become stronger. Therefore, this article addresses

the issue of institution-building by analysing the EU’s administrative
capacity criterion and the institution-building demands it has generated with
regard to the establishment of a professional, independent civil service.
The article starts with propositions derived from actor-oriented
approaches to Europeanisation with regard to the potential for change under
EU pressure for adaptation. Existing veto points, actor preferences and their
convergence around policy ideas are discussed in the context of EU
governance in the enlargement process. The discussion of EU governance in
the enlargement process suggests that the overwhelming presence of
conditionality in the EU enlargement governance mode leaves little
possibility for actors to exercise their veto. With very few institutional veto
points, the EU is, on the whole, quite successful in transferring formal
institutional rules to the candidates. However, the impact of the EU cannot
be expected to be uniform. The article argues that there is a strong possibility
that the imported rules will not lead to stable institutions under two
conditions: if the ideas underpinning the proposed institutional rules are not
clear enough to offer a coherent institutional model; and if domestic
preferences do not converge towards reform. This argument is illustrated
with reference to public administration reform legislation adopted by the
candidates and their implementation and contestation. The article concludes
that institution-building in the case of horizontal administrative reform has
had mixed success in the post-Communist candidate states.

I N S T I T U T I O N - B U I L D I N G A S E U R O P E A N I S AT I O N

The growing literature on Europeanisation identifies several potential

mechanisms through which the EU affects institutions, norms and practices
inside the member states. Depending on the strand of sociological, rational
choice or historical institutionalism they are derived from, explanations
single out the importance of existing structures and the stickiness of national
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 173

policies and regulatory styles (historical institutionalism); processes of
learning, imitation and the diffusion of ideas (sociological and organisational
approaches); or the preferences of actors and institutionalised veto points
(rational institutionalist approaches).2 This article favours an actor-oriented
approach, which, similar to the mixed actor/institutions/
policy approach developed by Héritier et al.,3 takes into account not only
actors’ preferences, but also the role of ideas about institutions. The
framework developed by Héritier et al. suggests that adjustment will depend
on whether the prevailing preferences of key political actors favour the ideas
underpinning reform – for example in the case of transport networks,4
liberalisation – and on the number of formal and de facto veto positions
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which would allow the process of change to be stopped. Following Héritier

and Knill5 and Haverland,6 in the case of institution-building in Central and
Eastern Europe, we would have to establish whether there are important
institutionalised veto points and whether actors’ preferences are united with
regard to ideas about what the institutions should be. Before we apply these
propositions to the case of administrative reform, it is important to establish
whether the mode of governance in the enlargement process is different from
modes of governance inside the EU and whether this has an impact on
institutional structures.

Enlargement Governance – Different from Governance inside the EU?

Six years after Philippe Schmitter7 noted that enlargement studies had
remained outside the scope of theory-driven studies of European integration,
more serious efforts are emerging to try to bridge this gap and integrate
enlargement studies with the broader literature on governance in the EU and
Europeanisation.8 A focus on enlargement governance emerges from recent
work by Schimmelfennig9 and Grabbe10 on Europeanisation and governance
in the candidate states.11 ‘Governance by enlargement’ was taken initially to
mean an extension, in the international arena, of the EU’s existing modes of
governance. More recently, a consensus is forming that it is important to
specify more precisely the distinctive ways in which Europeanisation works
in candidate states.
Under the influence of adaptation pressures from the EU, which are
considerably greater than those exerted in any previous enlargement, the
candidate states are still completing large-scale post-Communist
transformations. Therefore, a Europeanisation approach to institution-
building in CEE has to take into account both the nature of the EU
enlargement governance and the post-Communist transformations.
The period during which the process of enlargement has been under way
coincides with the post-Communist period, which is ‘a distinct period of
organizational change’.12 Yet the crucially important issue of post-
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174 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

Communist institutional design, which makes this enlargement different, has

not been explored so far in depth by the enlargement literature, possibly
because it has had little contact with the ‘transitions to democracy’ literature
dealing with the post-Communist transitions and transformations.13 The two
not only pass each other as ships in the night, but they rarely even sail in the
same sea. To analyse governance by enlargement we need to draw insights
from both.
As is well established by now in the literature on transformations, post-
Communist transformations consist of multiple processes of change and
involve the making of numerous crucial institutional choices.14 These
choices, past and present, have shaped post-Communist institutions. Linz
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and Stepan, and Stark and Bruszt, among others, have discussed the ways in
which the strategic interactions of élites and opposition groups during the
transition period have shaped institutional choices in post-Communist
countries.15 It is important to stress that the European Union has been part of
these interactions in several ways: ideologically, by influencing ideas about
the future and providing an example of stability and prosperity; and
strategically, by setting the conditions for membership and using various
instruments of governance in the enlargement process. In terms of ideas, the
‘return to Europe’ has been the closest thing to a guiding ideology of the
post-Communist transformation, serving to unite the closely associated
processes of democratisation, marketisation and European integration.16
In terms of institutional choices, enlargement governance aiming to
ensure that the Union acquis is fully adopted influences the candidates’
choices on a daily basis. Even though domestic factors remain central for the
success of the post-Communist transformations and taking into account that
external factors include a whole array of international organisations such as
NATO and the IMF, the EU’s presence and its governance feature as external
factors of unprecedented significance. An important reason why the EU’s
institution-building efforts have the potential to succeed is that the collapse
of the Communist regimes and the corresponding undermining of beliefs and
norms associated with the Communist ideology provide an open field to
design new institutions where old ones have been discredited.17 This
important precondition for the acceptance of new institutions, not only as
sets of rules, but as corresponding norms and practices, may be present in the
case of some institutions in post-Communist states (for example,
parliaments) and absent in others (arguably the military). In anticipation of
further theoretical elaboration, it is assumed that the difference in the status
of target institutions sets limits on the EU’s influence.18
In addition to its crucial interaction with post-Communist
transformations, the EU governance extended to the candidates in the
enlargement period differs in several other respects from the bargaining or
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 175

network modes of governance existing inside the Union itself. It involves a
relatively small range of institutions and societal actors and is asymmetrical.
Whereas in the EU, governance is produced in the interaction between actors
at various levels who share power in a network or bargaining configuration,
in the enlargement process governance flows from the EU to the applicants
and is channelled mostly through the Commission and the Council, on the
EU side, and the executive, on the candidates’ side.19 Enlargement is
explicitly defined by the EU and accepted by the candidates as an
‘asymmetrical process’ of taking over the rules of a club. The enlargement
negotiations are, as stressed by many officials and experts involved in them,
such as Avery and Cameron and Mayhew,20 strictly about the conditions for
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joining the club. This means the possibility to negotiate the norms and rules
to be adopted is very limited, in contrast to the negotiation style of
governance inside the EU. Linked to the asymmetry of the process is another
characteristic of enlargement governance, namely, the emphasis on the
transfer of the acquis of the Union, arguably representing the
institutionalised rules and norms that allow the Union to function as it does.
From the first enlargement onwards, it has been well established that the EU
has projected its formal and informal rules by insisting that new members
take up the acquis communautaire in full – a norm which has become
institutionalised as the EU’s ‘classical method of enlargement’.21
Arguably the most prominent feature of enlargement governance, which
makes the EU’s influence ever more strongly felt in the candidate states, is
the employment of conditionality. The EU started to use conditionality in the
first (Trade and Co-operation, later Association) agreements it concluded
with the CEE states, by including suspension clauses that made the operation
of the agreements conditional on respect for human and minorities’ rights
and democratic principles. Conditionality was and remains strong in the
PHARE programme, the main vehicle for financial support for Central and
Eastern Europe. By introducing formal criteria for accession in the 1990s, the
EU developed the most complex and extensive set of conditions it has ever
used towards third countries.22 EU conditionality goes far beyond ensuring
that the Union’s institutional rules and norms are established. For this
purpose, it would have been sufficient to ensure the transposition of the
acquis. Instead, EU conditions have been partially designed to address
transformation problems and weaknesses of the candidates. This is evident
from an examination of the so-called Copenhagen criteria, introduced by the
Copenhagen European Council in June 1993, which became the linchpin of
the enlargement mode of governance. The European Council specified that
in order to gain membership, a candidate country would have to have
achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law,
human rights and respect for, and protection of, minorities; the existence of
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176 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

F I GURE 1
MODES OF GOVERNANCE

Characteristics ‘New governance’ in the EU ‘Governance by enlargement’

Steering The allocation of values Institution-building

in everyday politics

Relationships between Non-hierarchical Asymmetrical, hierarchical

actors

Governance style Problem-solving, bargaining Conditionality

a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with

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competitive pressures and market forces within the Union; and the ability to
take on the obligations of membership, including its aims of political,
economic and monetary union.23 The criteria were later developed in
enlargement instruments such as the Commission’s Opinions on the
candidates, the yearly Progress Reports and the Accession Partnerships,
leading to increased and more complex conditionality.
This brief summary illustrates the fact that enlargement governance
possesses several features that do not exist in the relationship between the
Union and its member states. The differences are summarised in Figure 1.

Europeanisation and Institution-building: Towards a Common Framework

Examining the approach derived from Europeanisation studies in the light of
the differences outlined above, especially asymmetry and conditionality, we
can expect few institutionalised veto points as the candidates comply with
the EU conditions. Thus we can expect the EU to be quite successful in
designing new rules as a first step towards institution-building. Yet while the
scarcity of veto points and the failure of old institutions in post-Communist
countries should make EU-led institution-building successful, there is still
the question of whether major political actors are united around ideas about
the new institutions, so that the new rules have the chance to endure without
being immediately contested.
The question of ideas about institutional design, or models to be imitated,
is currently attracting the attention of a number of scholars working in the
social constructivist approach.24 Even starting from a more actor-oriented
approach, there is a strong argument for taking into account the consistency
of international norms, as not all international norms matter in the same way.
Legro has argued that the question of why some norms are more influential
than others in particular situations is not sufficiently elaborated in the
literature on norms.25 He suggests judging the robustness of norms according
to their specificity, durability and concordance. Following Legro, in
evaluating institution-building with regard to administrations, we should first
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 177

look at whether the EU has clear rules and an identifiable, specific and
durable set of norms with regard to administrations that could be transferred
through enlargement governance.
Secondly, it is argued here that despite the limited number of formal veto
points, the main political actors have to be united or close to a consensus on
institutional reforms. Otherwise, the new rules adopted with great speed and
little discussion under EU pressure may end up being disregarded by these
actors, contested and changed after accession or simply remain hollow
shells. The stability of institutions introduced in the enlargement process will
thus depend on the reform fit with the state of reform ideas and the extent to
which there is consensus on these among domestic actors. If there is a fit
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between the EU conditions and the reform consensus in CEE, successful

institutionalisation is more likely. The situation gets more interesting if one
of the other two options is true: if there is limited domestic consensus, then
the EU conditions might help tip the scales in favour of reformers, but the
new institutions may be weak. If the EU conditions are at odds with the
domestic reform fit, for example because domestic consensus is inspired by
different ideas or there is no consensus on reform, the new ‘imported’ rules
are likely to be contested and even changed once candidates are EU
members.
How do these propositions help us in analysing the case of the EU’s
administrative capacity requirements and institution-building in the
candidate states? The following sections discuss the emergence of the EU’s
administrative capacity criterion and its clarity and coherence, the
availability of common rules and norms with regard to administrations that
could serve as guidance for political actors, and the success of institution-
building so far with regard to horizontal administrative reform.

THE EU’S ADM I NI STRATI VE CAPACI TY R E Q U I R E ME N T

The emergence of the administrative capacity requirement, or ‘the

bureaucracy criterion’, can be traced to initial efforts to specify the
Copenhagen criteria. For the European Council in Essen in 1994, the
Commission prepared a strategy for the adoption of the internal market
legislation in the ‘White Paper on the Preparation of the Associated
Countries of Central and Eastern Europe for Integration into the Internal
Market of the Union’. In December 1995, the decisions of the Madrid
European Council followed up by requiring adjustment of administrative
structures. They stated that:
The European Council also confirms the need to make sound
preparation for enlargement on the basis of the criteria established in
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178 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

Copenhagen and in the context of the pre-accession strategy defined in

Essen for the CEE; that strategy will have to be intensified in order to
create the conditions for the gradual, harmonious integration of those
States, particularly through the development of the market economy,
the adjustment of their administrative structures and the creation of a
stable economic and monetary environment.26
The Madrid Council introduced a condition that had no precedent in previous
enlargements, in the course of which assessments of candidates had only
mentioned the requirement for the presence of adequate sectoral
administrative capacities, but never made it a key issue in the preparation for
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membership.27 In Agenda 2000, which emerged in 1997 and contained the

Commission’s Opinions on the candidates, the Commission followed the
Madrid conclusions, but set forth administrative capacity not as a
supplementary task, but as a necessary condition for accession, seemingly on
a par with the first three Copenhagen criteria. Part B.4 of the Opinions was
dedicated to ‘Administrative Capacity to Apply the Acquis’. Mention of this
condition was also made throughout the other sections and under Part C
‘Summary and Conclusions’: ‘A judgment on the three groups of criteria ...
depends also on the capacity of a country’s administrative and legal systems
to put into effect the principles of democracy and the market economy and
to apply and enforce the acquis in practice.’28
Striving to operationalise the administrative capacity criterion, the
Commission had, in 1996, informally requested the United Kingdom’s help
in making the democracy and the ‘bureaucracy’ criteria more specific, but
few ideas emerged from the UK or other member states. Furthermore, the
Commission had little time to define what institutions and administrative
units would be needed for the implementation of the sectoral acquis.29
Instead, a general criterion for ‘horizontal administrative capacity’, equalling
administrative reform, was created. After the initial work in Agenda 2000,
the European Commission asked the SIGMA unit of the OECD30 to develop
realistic baseline criteria for public administration horizontal administrative
capacity. Despite the development of the SIGMA baseline assessment tool,
administrative capacity remained an elusive concept. According to a
Commission source, ‘we never found a way to judge administrative capacity
among the existing member states. It was only in the case of the Central and
Eastern European candidates knocking on our door that we erected the
barrier of administrative capacity’.31
Following the path-dependent logic of conditionality, as enlargement
progressed, the administrative capacity requirements grew in importance and
complexity – from ‘administrative capacity’ to ‘institution-building’. Since
1997, the EU enlargement governance has required the strengthening of ‘the
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 179

institutional and administrative capacity of the candidates’.32 The 1999
Commission Progress reports included the recommendations based on the
new baseline assessment of the candidates’ horizontal administrative
capacities made by SIGMA. Institution-building was also made a goal of the
PHARE programme and was included in the objectives of the new
enlargement instrument – the Accession Partnerships. The repeated
references to the new criterion, however, did not mean that there was more
clarity on what it implied. The Commission defined institution-building as
‘developing the structures and systems, human resources and management
skills needed to implement the acquis’.33 Given the Madrid European
Council conclusions, it seemed that the main need was to assess
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administrative capacity in relation to areas of the acquis – the so-called

sectoral administrative capacity, focusing on the ‘key areas for the
application of the acquis’, such as the single market, competition and so on.
However, the Opinions also extrapolated to require horizontal capacity,
reform of the administrative structures as a whole and, later, regionalisation
and reform of the judiciary. The main requirements associated with the
‘bureaucracy criterion’ emerged as sectoral capacity to implement sectoral
acquis; the development of European integration co-ordination structures;
horizontal reform of the administrations including civil service laws and a
strategy for comprehensive public administration reform; and, finally,
‘ability to implement’.
In their interactions with the candidates, Commission officials stressed
the need for the development of a professional civil service as a requirement
for membership, even more strongly than in the Opinions.34 The Commission
implicitly favoured the classical, Weberian model of civil service over the
‘new public management’ model, which has been at the core of the public
administration reform in Western Europe in the late twentieth century.35 The
civil service reform criterion was broken down into a series of specific
requirements (on the basis of the SIGMA baseline criteria) for a general
strategy for reform or an institution-building plan (IBP), the adoption of civil
service laws guaranteeing the professionalisation and political independence
of the administration, the establishment of a career system and pay reform,
requirements for the training of civil servants, local government reform and
others. Notably, since the year 2000, the progress reports have retreated from
the issue of horizontal public administration reform, and the only area for
which the Commission gives specific guidelines is sectoral capacity.
Financial assistance under the PHARE’s institution-building provision is
also entirely oriented towards the development of sectoral capacity. This
again indicates a weakness with regard to operationalising the horizontal
capacity criterion. As The Economist pointed out, ‘The Union has made
membership contingent on the introduction of new administrative and
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180 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

judicial structures, but it has no mechanism for judging the quality of an

administration’.36

WILL ADM I NI STRATI VE CAPACI TY REQ U I R E ME N T S L E A D TO

SUCCESS FUL I NSTI TUTI ON- BUI LDI NG?

As discussed above, the success of institution-building may depend on the

precondition that the institutions concerned have been thoroughly discredited
in the past. Administrations, the focus of this article, have numerous
problems with their Communist legacy, discussed in an increasing body of
literature, for example by Goetz and Wollmann and Verheijen.37 They can
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reasonably be assumed to be discredited institutions. In the first place, the

use of bureaucracy as a Communist Party tool of oppression has ensured that
post-Communist élites have a serious problem re-establishing the legitimacy
of public authority.38 Secondly, not only the legitimacy, but also the
efficiency of the post-Communist bureaucracies is questionable. The
separation of the party and state at the start of post-Communist
transformations left post-Communist states with weak bureaucracies which,
with few exceptions, had never functioned without party control and
guidance. One consequence was the inability of post-Communist states to
separate bureaucracy and politics and to allow some degree of independence
of the administration from political interference. Assuming that we accept
that post-Communist administrations are open to change, we have to
establish whether there exists a model of a new institutional order around
which political actors could unite.

Is there a Coherent EU Model or Administrative Acquis?

There are no EU treaty provisions regarding the design of the member states’
public administrations and no general body of European law in the public
administration sphere. Individual member states are free to organise their
administrations as they see fit. ‘In actual fact, public administration structures
and regulations vary a great deal among the present EU member states. All of
them jealously guard their independence on this issue. That they should refuse
to recognise an applicant’s right to do the same is unthinkable.’39 Thus, the
acquis, which represents the formal rules the EU would like the candidates to
adopt, does not exist in the case of the administrative criterion. The absence
of institutionalisation in this area is also evident from the account presented
above of how difficult the administrative criterion has been to operationalise.
But what about common administrative norms, which may not be formally
enshrined in the acquis, but, nevertheless, have a significant impact through
informal arrangements? Do they exist in a form sufficiently specific to
provide a model for the candidates?
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A SIGMA paper claiming to define ‘a non-formalized version of the
acquis communautaire’ derives from the administrative and constitutional
arrangements of the member states and the case law of national courts and
the European Court of Justice the principles of reliability, predictability,
accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness.40 These are set as
guidelines for the CEE candidates in their reform efforts and appear to be
identified as common European norms. A more precise approach would be
to ask how widely accepted and ‘common’ for the EU member states they
are and for how long. Some of the principles are enshrined in wider EU
framework of rule of law and administration according to the law and clearly
correspond to EU-wide democratic norms. Other principles, however, such
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as transparency, are defined differently in existing EU member states, as

evidenced by the difficulties which the 2001 Swedish presidency of the EU
experienced when they tried to promote transparency by means of opening
access to EU documents. Efficiency and effectiveness are linked, in turn, to
the notion of the state as producer of public services, which has entered
public administrations fairly recently.41 It is therefore difficult to claim that
the SIGMA principles are shared and practiced by all member states in a
similar way.
However, it has been suggested that general EU-wide norms have emerged
as part of the process of Europeanisation, leading towards a common European
administrative space. Given the criterion of specificity defined by Legro, what
evidence can be found of the existence of the European Administrative Space,
defined by SIGMA as resulting from ‘a sort of Europeanisation of
administrative law as an outstanding element of recent legal developments’?
The answer is provided by the same experts who stress that
[a] common administrative space, properly speaking, is possible when a
set of administrative principles, rules and regulations are uniformly
enforced in a given territory covered by a national constitution. ... The
issue of a common administrative law for all the sovereign states
integrated into the European Union has been a matter of debate since the
outset of the European Community. No common agreement yet exists.42
This statement puts into question both the specificity and durability of
common EU norms regarding administrations. With respect to the third
criterion for international norms defined by Legro, concordance, recent
initiatives to compare ‘best practices’ suggest that there is an ongoing effort
to negotiate common norms with regard to administrative capacity. The
Dutch presidency launched an initiative for informal standard-setting among
EU member states in the area of administrative capacity in 1997. It was
meant to give substance to the ideas of European administrative space, but
although it was endorsed by some member states, it was not embraced by
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182 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

others (for example the UK). Following work on the development of a

Common Assessment Framework (CAF),43 a conference on best practices
under the Portuguese presidency adopted the Framework in 2000. Guidelines
were prepared in the second half of 2000 and approved under the Swedish
presidency in 2001.44 The voluntary assessment framework aims to be ‘an aid
to public administrations in the EU’ in the use of quality management
techniques in public administration. Efforts at co-ordination based on the
CAF guidelines indicate norms may be under construction, although how far
they are accepted by all EU member states is unclear. On the whole, the
above discussion seems to suggest that none the above SIGMA defined
‘principles’ can be identified as common EU norms or that they are in the
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process of negotiation in the EU itself and are not sufficiently specific yet.

EXAMINING EVIDENCE OF REFORM

Existing evidence regarding the state of civil service legislation in the

candidate countries shows that with few exceptions they have complied with
the EU criteria and introduced, in the last few years, new laws regarding the
civil service and the status of civil servants. This evidence is summarised in
Table 1.
Having been inspired, with few exceptions,45 by the EU’s administrative
capacity requirements discussed above, the adopted laws have much in
common. As mentioned previously, they are based on the classical Weberian
model of public administration. By enshrining the classical dichotomy
between politics and administration perceived as central in the classical
model, the laws aim to secure the independence of civil servants from
political dismissals. Despite an interest in NPM elements such as
performance-related remuneration and assessment, the emphasis of the
reforms introduced with these laws is on trying to ensure continuity and
preventing the high turnover that has been characteristic for the politicised
atmosphere of post-Communist politics.
The domestic institutional preferences of the main political parties and
other actors have, however, clearly varied. In some candidate countries, there
was prior political consensus about the need for administrative reform (for
example, Hungary and, to a certain extent, Poland and Estonia), evidenced
by the fact that reforms were already under way when EU conditionality
started playing a role. In others, however, consensus among political actors
and especially political parties had not formed, and the EU conditions
‘overruled’ the diversity of preferences.
Political interference continues to be an enduring feature of
administrations in the post-Communist states. Political parties have often
aimed to preserve conditions under which they can control the administration
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 183

TABL E 1
C I V I L S E RVI CE RE F ORM L E GI S L AT I ON PAS SED IN C EE C O U N TR IES A FTER 1989

Candidate Start of Laws on the civil service

State negotiations for
EU membership

Bulgaria 2000 State Administration Law 1998, amended 2001

Civil Service Law adopted 1999, in force 2000
Czech Republic 1998 No civil service law, although legislation expected in
2002
Estonia 1998 Public Service Act adopted 1995, in force 1996; public
administration reform concept 1998
Hungary 1998 Civil Service Law/Legal Status of Public Officials 1992,
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under amendment
Latvia 2000 Law on Civil Service 1994; Law on the State Civil
Service 2001; Draft law on public administration; Draft
law on administrative procedures
Lithuania 2000 Civil Service Law 1999, several amendments, latest 2002
Law on Officials 1995; Law on the organisation of the state
administration 1998
Poland 2000 Law adopted 1996, revised, the new Law on Civil Service
adopted 1998*
Romania 1998 Law on the Status of Civil Servants 1999
Slovakia 2000 2001 Civil Service Law adopted after protracted debates
and amendments, reform has been Labour Code oriented
Slovenia 1998 1990, considered in need of major changes

Notes: * Poland was the only state among the ones examined here to have a pre-1989 legal
framework, the old Civil Service Law from 1982.

Sources: SIGMA, OECD, at http://www.oecd.org/puma/sigmaweb/acts/civilservice/cslaws.htm

consulted at 2 May 2001, papers by Reinholde, Hintea and Junjan and Verheijen.

tightly and install ‘loyal’ officials. As Verheijen has warned, ‘even if there is
a significant difference in the degree of progress made [with administrative
reform] in these states, their new Civil Service Systems cannot be considered
irreversible and sure to survive a change of government’.46
In the majority of candidate states, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia,
Lithuania, Slovakia and Romania, there is some evidence of overt or covert
lack of consensus regarding administrative reform. Testimony from experts
and officials in both Latvia and Romania suggests that administrative reform
laws were adopted under EU pressure (and, in Romania, as part of a hurried
process of trying to fulfil what was deemed a condition to start negotiations),
but domestic consensus on the new rules and norms had not been reached at
the time legislation was adopted.47 In Lithuania, there was similarly some
evidence of lack of consensus on the civil service reforms, leading to
frequent changes in the laws and uncertainty. Yet experts stress that
disagreements concerned the interpretation of the Weberian model rather
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184 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

than alternatives to it. Even the 1999 conservative government, which

favoured NPM-inspired measures, regarded them as supplementary to the
basic rules of Weberian bureaucracy.48 Slovakia adopted new legislation
despite disagreements threatening to destabilise its governing coalition,
which were primarily generated by the regionalisation component of
administrative capacity requirements. This illustrates the difficulties created
by the EU’s enlargement governance mode, which precludes domestic
consensus-seeking – a problem also illustrated by developments in Bulgaria.

Adopted and Contested Laws: The Case of Bulgaria

The adoption and implementation of civil service legislation in Bulgaria
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provides a textbook example of how laws adopted in a hurry in response to

EU conditionality very soon become contested. Moreover, the rules that
these laws aim to enshrine as the institutional foundation of independent and
professional administrations are then changed. Several pieces of legislation,
among which the State Administration Law (1998), the Civil Service Law
(1999), the Law on Public Service Delivery to Natural and Legal Persons
(1999), the Access to Public Information Law, as well as a strategy to
underpin civil service reform, were adopted under the government of the
Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) (1997–2001). The UDF government
also set up the Institute for Public Administration and European Integration
(IPAEI) as a training institution.
The State Administration Law deals with the structure of the
administrative system and executive authority, while the Civil Service Law
defines the status of civil servants. Both aimed to create a professional civil
service, insulated from arbitrary personnel decisions, which have
characterised the strongly politicised administration in the post-Communist
period.49 The Civil Service Law, however, was criticised for a number of
shortcomings, such as the imprecise definition of the term civil servant, the
lack of co-ordination with provisions in the Labour Code, the lack of
performance assessment criteria and performance-related remuneration
provisions.50 On the whole, however, the very adoption of the laws had the
potential of reducing the politically motivated dismissals of civil servants
carried out by several governments in the post-Communist period.
Another important law, the Law on Access to Official Information was
adopted to increase transparency and accountability in the work of the civil
service. It is encountering some difficulties in implementation, partly due to
lack of training of civil servants regarding their obligations under the new
legislation. However, the law has changed the structure of domestic
opportunities. Its implementation is promoted and monitored by an active
non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Access to Information
Programme Foundation. The Foundation keeps a register of cases of
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 185

improper withholding of information by civil servants and presents yearly
reports on the implementation of the law as well as organising training for
civil servants.51
While the problems with the Law on Access to Information appear to be
typical problems of implementation, the laws defining the state
administration and the status of civil servants were immediately contested
with the change of government in June 2001. A reduction in the number of
civil servants by ten per cent across the board was one of the pre-electoral
promises of the coalition government, consisting of former King Simeon
Saxecoburggotski’s movement – the National Movement for Simeon the
Second (NMSS) – and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF),
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which represents the Turkish minority. An amendment in the State

Administration Law was introduced by the coalition government in 2001,
changing the status of agency directors stipulated in Art. 19, which allowed
the NMSS to appoint a director with qualifications lower than the
requirements for civil servants. Further amendments were being considered
in 2002 and are expected to emerge in June 2002 in the legislative
programme of the parliament.52 In the meantime, short-term contracts and
ministerial reorganisation plans present a limited opportunity for some civil
servants to be laid off, as the Labour Code still allows dismissals in case of
structural reorganisations.
The smaller coalition partner, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms,
has targeted medium-level civil servants with strong public criticism in the
media. The problem remains one of politicisation: like most preceding
governments, the current government and especially MRF claim that
medium-level civil servants remain loyal to the opposition, the UDF, and that
they are sabotaging economic reform efforts. This discourse, which easily
finds popular resonance, is widely used to justify dismissals. At the same
time, the coalition government is keen to maintain a reform-oriented, pro-EU
image and to communicate to the EU a desire to continue public
administration reform. They have introduced a strategy for the training of
civil servants and a strategy for combating corruption and have passed a
decree on performance-related pay – all measures which seem to strengthen
institution-building. However, it is argued here that the proposed
amendments, even if presented as steps towards modernising the
administration, would make Bulgarian institutions even more unstable and
would have the opposite effect of institution-building. The stability that is
essential for the new institutions to develop is lacking: according to press
reports, 150 civil servants with temporary contracts (not protected by the
law) were dismissed in August–September 2002 in the Ministry of
Agriculture, led by MRF minister Mehmed Dikme.53 Institution-building, in
the sense of the creation and development of a professional independent civil
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186 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

service, is hindered by the lack of consensus on a model for the

administration by at least one major political party.
The developments presented here are not unique or specific to Bulgaria,
but fit into a general pattern. Anyone tempted to attribute the problems
discussed in this section to Bulgaria’s place in the EU accession process need
look no farther than the Czech Republic, where horizontal administrative
reform, in the purely formal, legal aspects, has hardly taken off. There has
been an even more pronounced lack of consensus, as the party led by Vaclav
Klaus, the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), has argued against civil service
legislation on principle, saying that it is not necessary for modernising
administrations. The ODS has particularly opposed legislation which would
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define and secure the positions of civil servants. Since the EU continues to
press for such legislation, this has become a point of contention in the Czech
accession negotiations and evidence of the failure of enlargement
governance to take into account domestic preferences.

CONCLUSION

The case of public administration reform discussed in this article aims to be

a first step towards developing a more general framework evaluating the
success of the EU’s enlargement governance in institution-building. Even
more so than Europeanisation, institution-building in post-Communist states
is a complex process which deserves further attention from scholars in order
to define the conditions under which we can expect it to be successful.
Evidence regarding the creation of new civil service systems suggests that in
a number of the candidate states new legislation has been adopted, but in
many cases it has not been the outcome of reform consensus, but rather, the
result of EU conditionality. Thus these reforms are in danger of being
disregarded or contested, and, as candidates join the EU, legislation may be
changed altogether as institutional veto points multiply and candidates have
more autonomy with regard to their administrations. Therefore, institution-
building under the guidance of the EU may not lead to the creation of lasting
and stable institutions. The first reason for this is that in the case of
administrative capacity the EU does not have a strong and coherent model.
The second and crucial reason is that, at least in some cases, the institution-
building exercise fails to take into account the preferences of domestic
political actors, which do not have the possibility of exercising a veto as they
would in EU member states.
Experiences with implementation in the EU show that actors sometimes
try to win back at the implementation stage what they lost at the decision-
making stage. There is no reason to assume that actors in CEE will be any
different. The EU would have to accept that conditionality does not create
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 187

institutions without consensus and work with politicians and the public to
help political actors build such a consensus.

NOTES

The author would like to acknowledge financial support from the Netherlands Scientific Council
(NWO). I would also like to thank Berthold Rittberger, Bernard Steunenberg, Tony Verheijen and
the participants of the Enlargement workshop of the ECPR Joint Sessions of workshops, Turin,
March 2002, for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the officials who
helped me with information on civil service reform in the various CEE countries. For the purposes
of this article, the latter include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. This article focuses on post-Communist transformations
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and, therefore, does not deal with the other candidates, Cyprus and Malta, or Turkey

1. A.J.G. Verheijen, ‘Administrative Capacity Development: A Race Against Time?’ WRR

Working Document no. 107 (The Hague: Scientific Council for Government Policy 2000),
pp.8–9.
2. For an overview, see, for example, A. Héritier, ‘Differential Europe: The European Union
Impact on National Policy Making’, in A. Héritier et al., Differential Europe: The European
Union Impact on National Policy Making (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield 2001), pp.1–13.
For a different, broader definition of Europeanisation see C.M. Radaelli, ‘Whither
Europeanisation: Concept Stretching and Substantive Change’, European Integration online
Paper (EioP) 4/8, http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2000-008a.htm.
3. Héritier, ‘Differential Europe: The European Union Impact on National Policy Making’. See
also A. Héritier, ‘The Accommodation of Diversity in European Policy Making and its
Outcomes: Regulatory Policy as a Patchwork’, Journal of European Public Policy 3/2 (1996),
pp.149–67.
4. Héritier, ‘Differential Europe’, p.18.
5. A. Héritier and C. Knill, ‘Differential Reponses to European Policies: A Comparison’, in
Héritier et al., Differential Europe, p.288.
6. M. Haverland, ‘National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional
Veto Points’, Journal of Public Policy 20/1 (2001), pp.83–103.
7. P.C. Schmitter, ‘Examining the Present Euro Polity with the Help of Past Theories’, in G.
Marks et al., Governance in the European Union (London: Sage 1996), p.14.
8. With respect to governance, L. Friis and A. Murphy, ‘The European Union and Central and
Eastern Europe: Governance and Boundaries’, Journal of Common Market Studies 37/2
(1999), pp.211–32, have argued that with this enlargement, the EU has created a new
negotiating order whereby, ‘the applicant countries are governed by a constant process of
negotiations’.
9. In one of the most promising attempts to combine theoretical insights for systematic
explanations of enlargement inputs, processes and outputs, F. Schimmelfennig has analysed
the EU’s enlargement decisions as rhetorical action; see ‘The Community Trap: Liberal
Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union’, International
Organization 55/1 (2001). See also idem, ‘The Enlargement of European Regional
Organizations: Questions, Theories, Hypotheses and the State of Research’. Paper presented
at the workshop on ‘Governance by Enlargement’ Darmstadt University of Technology, 23–25
June 2000, where he discusses ideas of enlargement as governance.
10. H. Grabbe, ‘How Does Europeanisation Affect CEE Governance? Conditionality, Diffusion
and Diversity’, Journal of European Public Policy 8/6 (2001), pp.1013–31.
11. There is a case to be made for even closer links between the study of enlargement and general
developments in European integration theory and interest in governance. For the various
meanings of governance, see for example J. Pierre, Debating Governance: Authority, Steering
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188 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press 2000). Jachtenfuchs reviews the
governance approach in the EU literature in ‘The Governance Approach to European
Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies 39/2 (2001), pp.249–64. B. Kohler-Koch,
‘The Evolution and Transformation of European Governance’, in R. Eising and B. Kohler-
Koch (eds.), The Transformation of Governance in the European Union (London:
Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science 1999), among others, distinguishes
between old and new governance in the EU. ‘New governance’ is most often taken to imply
the steering of society without a central authority or a government by a multiplicity of state
and non-state actors involved in polycentric and non-hierarchical relationships.
12. V.I. Ganev, ‘Dysfunctional Sinews of Power: Problems of Bureaucracy Building in Post
Communist Balkans’, Paper presented at the conference on ‘Civil Society, Political Society
and the State: A Fresh Look at the Problems of Governance in the Balkan Region’, Split,
Croatia, 23–24 Nov. 2001.
13. For reasons of space, only a small part of this vast body of literature can be mentioned here.
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For a discussion of transitions to democracy see for example T.L. Karl and P.C. Schmitter,
‘Models of Transition in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe’, International Social
Science Journal, 128 (1991), pp.269–84. Offe discusses the multiple challenges of transitions
to democracy and economic restructuring. In ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic
Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe’, Social Research 58/4 (1991),
pp.865–92 he suggested that post-Communist transformations towards market economy,
democracy and independent states would be so complex that they would need an external
guiding power to succeed. The difficulties in establishing stable institutions are discussed in
C. Offe, ‘Designing Institutions in East European Transitions’, in R. Goodin (ed.), The Theory
of Institutional Design (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998). Di Palma provides a
more optimistic view in his To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions
(Berkeley: University of California Press 1990). A comparative overview of transitions to
democracy can be found in J.J. Linz and A. Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and
Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post Communist Europe (Baltimore and
London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1996). For an example of a different approach,
analysing post-Communist networks, see D. Stark and L. Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways:
Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 1998).
14. Offe, ‘Capitalism by Democratic Design’. See also J. Elster, C. Offe and U.K. Preuss,
Institutional Design in Post Communist Societies: Rebuilding the Ship At Sea (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press 1998).
15. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition; Stark and Bruszt, Post-Socialist
Pathways.
16. On the ‘return to Europe’ discourse and its link to enlargement see K. Henderson (ed.), Back
to Europe: Central and Eastern Europe and the European Union (London: UCL Press 1999).
17. C. Offe, ‘Designing Institutions’, pp.210–11.
18. J.T. Checkel, ‘Compliance and Conditionality’, Arena Working Paper no. 18 (Oslo: Arena,
Sept. 2000). On the importance of the ‘target sector’ see also R. Epstein, ‘International
Institutions and the Depoliticization of Economic Policy in Post Communist Poland: Central
Banking and Agriculture Compared’, Paper presented at the ECPR workshop ‘Enlargement
and European Governance’, ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Turin, 22–27 March 2002.
19. For the executive bias of enlargement, see H. Grabbe, ‘How Does Europeanisation affect CEE
Governance?’ and idem, ‘Europeanisation goes East: Power and Uncertainty in EU Accession
Politics’, Paper presented at the ECPR workshop “Enlargement and European Governance’,
ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Turin, 22–27 March 2002.
20. G. Avery and F. Cameron, The Enlargement of the European Union (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1998); A. Mayhew, ‘Enlargement of the European Union: An Analysis of the
Negotiations with the Central and Eastern European Candidate Countries’. Sussex European
Institute Working Paper no. 39, Sussex, Dec. 2000.
21. C. Preston, Enlargement and Integration in the European Union (London: Routledge 1997);
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ENLARGEM ENT AND I NSTI TUTI ON BUI L D I N G 189

M.J. Baun, A Wider Europe: The Process and Politics of European Union Enlargement
(Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield 2000).
22. There has been a real ‘explosion’ in the use of conditionality by international organisations, as
discussed in numerous works by Checkel, such as ‘Compliance and Conditionality’ and ‘Why
Comply? Social Learning and European Identity Change’, International Organization 55
(2001). On conditionality in the context of democratic transitions, see P.C. Schmitter, ‘The
Influence of the International Context Upon the Choice of National Institutions and Policies
in Neo-Democracies’, in L. Whitehead (ed.), The International Dimensions of
Democratization: Europe and the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998),
pp.26–55, A.L. Dimitrova, ‘The Role of the European Union in the Process of
Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe: Lessons from Bulgaria and Slovakia’ (Ph.D.
Thesis Limerick: University of Limerick September 1998). See also Grabbe, ’How Does
Europeanisation Affect CEE Governance’; K. Maniokas, ‘Methodology of the EU
Enlargement: A Critical Appraisal’, Paper presented at the conference ‘Changing Rules,
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Changing Institutions’ (Bratislava, 29 Sept.–2 Oct. 2000); and E.A. Yankova, ‘Governed by
Enlargement? Dynamics of Central and Eastern Europe’s Accession to the European Union’,
Paper presented at the workshop on ‘Governance by Enlargement’ (Darmstadt: Darmstadt
University of Technology, 23–25 June 2000).
23. European Council in Copenhagen, 21–22 June 1993, Conclusions of the Presidency (DN:
DOC/93/3, of 22 June 1993). The criteria were supplemented by the caveat that the Union has
to be ready and able to absorb new members without compromising the achievements of
integration.
24. On the attractions of emulating foreign designs, see W. Jacoby, ‘Ordering from the Menu:
How Central and East European States Cope with EU Demands for Institutional Reform’,
Paper presented at the ECPR workshop “Enlargement and European Governance’, ECPR
Joint Sessions of Workshops, Turin, 22–27 March 2002.
25. J.W. Legro, ‘Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the “Failure” of Internationalism’,
International Organization 51/1 (1997), pp.31–63.
26. Madrid European Council, Conclusions of the Presidency, 16 Dec. 1995, Document 00400/95.
27. Verheijen notes that administrative capacity was deemed as sufficient in Austria, Finland and
Sweden and ‘not considered a stumbling block for accession in the previous enlargements’.
A.J.G. Verheijen, ‘Administrative Capacity Development for EU Accession’, pp.7, 21.
28. European Commission. Agenda 2000: For a Stronger and Wider Europe (Strasbourg and
Brussels, 16 July 1997).
29. Interview with a detached national expert, working at the Commission during the Agenda
2000 preparation, 3 July 1998.
30. SIGMA stands for Support for Improvement in Governance and Management in Central and
Eastern European Countries. It was established in 1992 as a joint initiative of the OECD
Center for Cooperation with Non-Member Economies and the EU’s PHARE programme. For
more on the SIGMA approach, see A.J.G. Verheijen, ‘Administrative Capacity Development
for EU Accession’.
31. Interview, Commission Official, 24 Nov. 2000.
32. Commission Information Note on the ‘New Policy Guidelines for the PHARE Programme in
the framework of Pre-Accession Assistance’, 24 March 1997.
33. European Commission, Twinning in Action.
34. T. Verheijen, ‘Civil Service Systems in EU Candidate States: Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Civil
Service Systems in Central and Eastern Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 1999), p.90.
35. J. Fournier, ‘Administrative Reform in the Commission Opinions Concerning the Accession
of Central and Eastern European Countries to the European Union’, in Preparing Public
Administration for the European Administrative Space, SIGMA Paper no. 23
(CCNM/SIGMA/PUMA (98), Paris: OECD 1998), p.113. For a recent overview of public
sector reform, see, for example, T.A.J. Toonen, ‘The Comparative Dimension of
Administrative Reform: Creating Open Villages and Redesigning the Politics of
Administration’, in B.G. Peters and J. Pierre (eds.), Politicians, Bureaucrats and
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190 WE S T E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S

Administrative Reform (London: Routledge/ECPR 2001), pp.183–202.

36. The Economist, ‘Europe’s Magnetic Attraction: A Survey of European Enlargement’ (19 May
2001).
37. See K.H. Goetz, ‘Making Sense of Post-Communist Central Administration: Modernization,
Europeanisation or Latinization?’ Journal of European Public Policy 8/6 (Dec. 2001),
pp.1032–51; K.H. Goetz and H. Wollmann, ‘Governmentalizing Central Executives in Post-
Communist Europe: A Four-country Comparison’, Journal of European Public Policy 8/6
(Dec. 2001), pp.864–887; and T. Verheijen, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Politico-
Administrative Relations: Who Rules? (Bratislava: NISPAcee 2001), pp.6–9.
38. D. Coombes, ‘Politics and Bureaucracy in the Modern Administrative State: Comparing
Western and Eastern Europe’, in Verheijen (ed.), Politico-Administrative Relations, p.37.
39. Preparing Public Administration for the European Administrative Space, p.13.
40. European Principles for Public Administration, Sigma paper no. 27 (CCNM/SIGMA/PUMA
(99) 44/REV1, Paris: OECD 1999), pp.8–19.
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41. Ibid., pp.12–13.

42. Ibid.
43. On the CAF, see information from the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) at:
http://www.eipa.nl/CAF/Introduction.htm.
44. See EIPA information at http://www.eipa.nl/CAF/Introduction.htm.
45. While most candidates adopted the model close to the classical Weberian model favoured by
the Commission, some candidate states, such as Estonia, had already adopted the NPM as their
reform ideology, exemplifying the diversity of existing reform discourses.
46. Verheijen (ed.), Politico-Administrative Relations, p.7. On parties and administrative reform
see also M. Beblavy, ‘Management of Civil Service Reform in Central Europe’, in G. Peteri
(ed.), Mastering Decentralisation and Public Administration Reform in Central and Eastern
Europe (Budapest: LGI books 2002) at http://lgi.osi.hu/publications/default.asp?id=98.
47. I. Reinholde, ‘Challenges to Public Administration Reform in Latvia’, Paper presented at the
conference ‘Changing Rules, Changing Institutions’ (Bratislava, 29 Sept.–2 Oct. 2000), and
C. Hintea and V. Junjan, ‘Administrative Reform in Romania’ (unpublished ms 2000).
48. Lithuanian government official, 18 May 2002.
49. R. Velinova, V. Bozhidarova and V. Kolcheva, ‘Politico-administrative Relations in Bulgaria’,
in Verheijen (ed.), Who Rules?, pp.64–85. For the historical development of the Bulgarian
civil service, see also T. Verheijen, ‘The Civil Service of Bulgaria: Hope on the Horizon’, in
idem (ed.), Civil Service Systems in Central and Eastern Europe.
50. S. Dimitrova, ‘Civil Servants Law in Bulgaria: Issues and Development Concepts’, Publichna
Administratzia 1/1 (Sofia: IPAEI 2002), pp.68–72. These shortcomings are very similar to the
gaps in the legislation in other candidate states where, similarly, performance assessment
criteria were introduced later with amendments of the civil service legislation (e.g. Lithuania).
51. For their latest report, see http://www.aip-bg.org/pdf/foia2001_report.pdf.
52. Interview, Council of Ministers Official, 22 April 2002.
53. V. Gospodinova, ‘DPS vze durzhavnite chinovnitzi na pritzel’ (‘MRF targets civil servants’)
Kapital, no. 15, April 2002.