Civil service reform after joining the EU: Sometimes progress, sometimes reversal

The eight countries that joined the European Union in 2004 were required to professionalize their civil services as a condition of membership.  In the new issue of Governance (24.2, April 2011), Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling of the University of Nottingham examines what happened next.  Three Baltic states continued on the path of reform; four countries — Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia — reversed course; while in Hungary, developments are hard to interpret.  The EU “failed to address the issue of post-accession durability,” Meyer-Sahling says, and “devised virtually no instruments to prevent backsliding.”  Read the article.