The politics of EU conditionality: the norm of minority protection during and beyond EU accession

The norm of minority protection is often singled out as a prime example of the political impact of European Union (EU) conditionality on the ethnically diverse states of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU's 'minority condition' is best understood as a political and social construct rooted in European security concerns. As such, it has had very 'real' effects, both intended and unintended, and direct and indirect. This article extends the study of EU conditionality by including the post-accession period, and by concentrating on the politics surrounding conditionality. As the cases of Latvia and Estonia demonstrate, high-intensity EU involvement during the accession process did generate a rationalist momentum for legislative change, and formal compliance gave rise to a perception of behavioural change. However, socialization effects can point in the opposite direction of the rationalist momentum that informs formal legal change and thereby 'lock in' deeper structural problems and contradictory behavioural trends.