Autocratization, Alignment and ‘Geopolitical Europe’: Contestations of EU conditionality in domestic and foreign policy in Serbia and Georgia 2019-2024

Why do close institutional relations through association or candidacy between the EU and neighbourhood countries result in contestation of EU norms? This paper seeks to explain the puzzling cases of Serbia and Georgia. Both have autocratized despite increasing closeness to the EU; and both have low rates of alignment with CFSP and refused sanctions alignment. Arguably, their contestation of EU conditionality is connected to the EU’s geopolitical interest, which determines whether contestation is sanctioned or tolerated. Existing research offers several factors affecting non-compliance, but the EU’s own geopolitical interest remains underdeveloped in explanations. Though competing influences in the neighbourhood are increasingly studied, domestic agency is found to determine compliance both with political and foreign policy norms (Ademmer et al., 2016; Delcour, 2018; Tolstrup, 2013). This paper seeks to connect these elements, drawing on relational approaches to Europeanization and geopolitics (Anghel, 2025; Slootmaeckers, 2025) to explain Serbia's and Georgia's trajectories from 2019 to 2024. It uses process-tracing (Beach & Pedersen, 2019), analysing a body of 60 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from politics, civil society and administration in Serbia, Georgia, and the EU, and yearly EU reports, to develop a causal mechanism. It argues that after the EU poses conditions regarding political and foreign policy norms, recipient countries respond with both compliance and contestation, maintaining relations with the EU but sustaining competitive authoritarian regimes. While the EU recognizes non-compliance, it only sanctions it according to its own geopolitical interests, avoiding enforcement costs. This creates negative feedback loops with differing results: a breakdown of relations with Georgia and the maintenance of relations with Serbia.