EU Conditionality: The case of the Baltic States

In expectations of the European Union accession and to be regarded as valid candidate countries, the Baltic states needed to meet the Copenhagen criteriäs minority policies. Given the EU¿s strong position and rather successful use of conditionality, it is surprising that the issue of the Russian-speaking minority residents in the Baltic States was not resolved prior to enlargement. It would be interesting to investigate and find out empirically the EU conditionality¿s influence introduced on the Baltic States concerning their respect for minority rights protection norms, and how this long process appeared to have a limited effect on fulfilling the conditions and still has a significant number of problems in regards with the Russian-speaking minority group. The book, in general, will aim to reveal and thus contribute to the European studies field by assessing the research problem and investigating how the EU conditionality has been applied to induce the Baltic States to comply with what an international actor demands to be done in order to achieve membership for the countries concerned.