This book examines new member states' problems with the absorption of EU funds. Since accession, many new member states from Central and Eastern Europe struggle to access their billions of development funds from Brussels. While existing research mostly emphasizes the role of states' administrative capacities to account for absorption problems, this study adds the so far neglected role of politics as party politicization to the equation. The argument is tested using a combination of fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) with two detailed process tracing case studies. This book will appeal to scholars interested in EU cohesion policy, post-accession compliance, and post-communist politics.

Christian Hagemann is Research Fellow in Policy Analysis at the Bavarian School of Public Policy at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. Dr Hagemann's research in the field of EU studies particularly focuses on the EU's transformative power in the post-communist space.