CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Catuti, Mihnea Catalin |
|---|---|
| Title | Europeanisation in the Western Balkans? Compliance with the Energy Community environmental acquis in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia |
| Summary | The Europeanisation of the Western Balkans has been one of the most ambitious projects of the European Union. However, the situation has proven to be more complicated than it was the case for the other formerly communist states that are now part of the EU. Consequently, the EU has been reluctant to commit to a clear accession timetable for the countries in the region and created other mechanisms through which it could export its rules. The Energy Community is one of the most important such instruments, having the purpose to transform the energy and environmental sectors in the EU’s neighbourhood. Nonetheless, the compliance of the Western Balkans states with the requirements of this organisation has been patchy and incomplete. Therefore, this paper seeks to explain what are the main factors contributing to this record, by conducting a comparative case study analysis of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania’s compliance with three environmental directives of the Energy Community. The evidence confirms the idea put forward by the external incentives theoretical model that the size and speed of rewards offered by the EU and the credibility of conditionality need to be high in order to overcome the significant adoption costs and vested domestic interests. The performance of the two countries remains poor, as even when the Energy Community directives have been transposed at the domestic level, weak administrative capacities and low levels of civil society engagement have represented great barriers to the actual implementation of the legislation. Moreover, the weak sanctioning mechanisms of the Energy Community have been ineffective at correcting this problem. Overall, it appears that the Energy Community has only led to a ‘shallow’ Europeanisation of the energy and environmental sectors of its members. |
| Supervisor | Puetter, Uwe |
| Department | School of Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/catuti_mihnea.pdf |
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