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The ongoing debates within European studies over the nature of Central and Eastern European accession to the European Union (EU) have generated interest about the legacies of the communist past because of the importance of the role of previous modes of governance on the current politics of the entire continent. How do these legacies interact with the accession process to produce the current outcomes? What is the role of the EU in producing these outcomes? What are the limitations of the EU?s influence on the newly acceded countries? Models of the diffusion of international norms which utilize the EU as an organization platform may provide the beginning of an answer to these questions. This paper argues that in particular the spiral model of norm diffusion is useful at describing the ?transition? of Central and Eastern European countries to liberal democratic states rather than the internalization and consolidation of these norms. The influence of the European Union upon the accession countries is limited because of the two factors which have had an effect upon the accession criteria. The first is the positive enforcement of EU conditionality which is no longer effect in a post-accession environment. The second is the emphasis upon harmonization rather than development within the accession countries. This has limited the depth of the changes within the societies of Central and Eastern Europe. By clarifying the theoretical issues surrounding the accession to the EU, this paper promotes a greater understanding of the current and future politics between ?old? and ?new? Europe. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]