Development of the EU's conditional principle: The cold war era and after

From a very early date, the principle of conditionality has been applied in the history of the European Union. The principle of conditionality can also be defined as implementing the reforms that the European Union wants from candidate countries before membership. The principle of conditionality was first included in the Treaty of Rome and in the founding treaties of the European Union. It is claimed that the principles of conditionality became institutionalized in the accession process of the Central and Eastern European countries that seceded from Soviet Russia after the end of the Cold War. Geopolitical changes occurred in the European continent in the 1990s. Membership criteria have been seen as a strategic tool in order to eliminate the difference in development level between Western Europe and Eastern European countries within the European Union and to ensure a balance between the member countries within the Union. With the Copenhagen Criteria adopted in 1993, it is aimed that Central and Eastern European countries comply with EU norms The European Union has reached the level of being an international actor in this new geopolitical framework. In this study, the historical change of the conditionality principle has been discussed. There is a tendency in the literature that the conditionality principle of the EU started to be applied with the end of the Cold War. However, the EU has started to apply this principle much earlier on a limited scale. The principles applied on limited ways were not as comprehensive as the Copenhagen Criteria. In the light of this information, the Copenhagen Criteria applied to the Central and Eastern European countries and the membership criteria applied before the Cold War were discussed comparatively.With this comparative analysis, it has been revealed that the Cold War was the turning point in the history of the conditionality principle. Keywords: Conditional Principle, Copenhagen Criteria, CEECs, Cold War, EU Enlargements