Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the challenge to rebuild the ship at sea, as Offe called the simultaneous economic and political transition process in Central and Eastern Europe has theoretically been completed. Ten former communist countries have successfully fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria and are Members of the European Union. However, other claim that only now as the EU pressure and supervision has been relieved, the actual transition in line with the country specific needs has started and should therefore be evaluated. Various authors have argued, that the challenging task to transform both polity and economy is naturally accompanied by a preferential sequence of choices. However, the visibility of this sequencing varied from country to country given the fact that from an external perspective no alternative but simultaneity was feasible and possible. Still, the distinctive characteristics of the country influenced the emphasis and success of either of them. Choosing the national social dialogue as an example, this paper is an attempt to elaborate on the impact of exogenous and endogenous factors on institutional adaptation and change in one of the newest member states of the European Union: Romania. Hereby, first of all a thorough analysis in necessary to find out in how far we can actually speak of change, or if the concept of formalism, the discrepancy between the formal implementation of legislation on paper and the actual activation of this legislation by putting it into practice down to the smallest unit is a more accurate concept describing the status quo. In order to do so, a systematic process analysis of the interplay between the EU and the policy changes in Romania with regard to the social dialogue will be pursued.
