Scholars such as O’Donnell include rule of law among the key dimensions in the study of foundations of democracy and the implicit preconditions for democracy. Informal institutions among which we include corruption and clientelism establish main obstacle in establishing the rule of law thus fully and firmly establishing democracy in transition countries. In the Central and Eastern Europe, the most important factor accelerating the changes in the rule of law, initiated in the transition, was the EU accession process – EU together with other international organizations fostered major changes in the judiciary sector - concentrating mainly on the reforms in judiciary sector and ´various anti-corruption. However, the EU conditionality, as well as the leverage varied across the region, depending on contextual factors such as 1) cultural heritage; 2) institutional factors such as institutional set-up especially the functioning of the checks and balances system; and 3) actors – constellation as well as willingness of actors to implement proposed changes. The proposed paper seeks to fill the gap in existing research by 1) analyzing the interplay between rule of law and compliance in the CEE region in the context of EU accession process; 2) identifying key reform measures taken against corruption and clientelism in the CEE accession process and 3) outline the factors that played crucial role in this process and affect the quality of the rule of law in the CEE region.
