1. Summary The question of whether the political conditions of membership of the European Union (EU) have changed since the 2004 enlargement has become – especially in light of potential future enlargements – increasingly relevant. In his study Frank Schimmelfennig addresses this topic. Observing the episodes of postponement of the accession negotiations with Croatia or freezing of the association agreements with Serbia, the greater relevance of the issue is evident. To delve deeper into the causes of these events, the author examines two aspects. First, whether non-member states qualified for association or membership have been discriminated against by the EU's enlargement policy and, second, whether internal issues are reasons for stagnation in accession or association processes. The results provide two implications: first, they show “that the EU's enlargement policy remained consistently linked to respect for basic democratic norms” (Schimmelfennig 2008, p. 919) and that there was no discrimination. Secondly, after examining the cases of Croatia, Serbia and Turkey, the findings highlight that “the legacy of ethnic conflict” (ibid, p. 919) in these non-member states hinders conditionality (see ibid, p. 918f .) and then explain the recent disconcerting negotiations.2. CriticaSchimmelfennig's article contains, in addition to a solid theoretical basis, a contested conceptual specification as well as a selection bias. All three issues will be discussed below. First, before moving on to the two shortcomings, it is necessary to underline that the expectations regarding political conditionality are well established and supported. In short “the success of political conditionality depends on (i) the conditional offer of membership to the EU (…);… halfway through the document… the theoretical framework well explained and supported by udy is undermined by the specification of the questionable concept concerning the Freedom House score and selection bias. Thus the overall relevance of the article to the research area is reduced, but at the same time the improvement of the study's shortcomings indicates places for future research. A large-N study examining compliance costs at the national level could shed more light on the topic and improve the ability to generalize about EU membership conditionalities after the 2004 enlargement. Works Cited Schimmelfennig, Frank (2008): EU policy accession conditionality after the 2004 enlargement: coherence and effectiveness. In: Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 3.6pm. P. 918-937. Commission of the European Communities (2009): The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2009 Progress Report. Brussels.