Countries that are candidates for European Union (EU) accession face the complex and urgent task of building administrative institutions so that they can fulfil the “Copenhagen criteria”. Such institutions must be able to implement the acquis communautaire within tight budget constraints and...

Central and eastern European countries have been and still are adapting their legal framework to the requirements of a Western market economy and the body of EU legislation, the acquis communautaire. As the harmonisation of the national legal framework to EU standards is one of the yardsticks...

This paper analyses the negotiations which will take place with the six Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia & Herzogovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) and attempts to identify where the major problems are likely to lie. The experience of the...

In the Baltic States, the process of independence started after the elections in spring 1990 and was completed by August 1991. Fifty-one years after being forced to join the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania each regained their independence and became once again part of the western...