Adaptation of the Legal Systems of Candidate Countries - the Case of the Baltic States

Christen Boye Jacobsen

Danish Institute of International Affairs

Abstract

In all the countries of Eastern Europe, the collapse of the socialism presented the legal system and the lawyers and administrators with an immense conceptional and practical challenge. In a couple of years, and in a constantly changing economic and political climate, they were required

• To introduce the rule of law and democracy (der demokratisch-freiheitliche Rechtsstaat),
• To introduce and implement the rules and institutions of a market economy,
• To modernise the normative acts and the public institutions of virtually all aspects of a modern society, and
• To implement the EU-acquis.

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