With the goal of studying compliance in the international system, this research focuses the project of the European Union (EU), and more specifically of the European Commission, for the enlargement to the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). The EU established conditionality norms for membership of those countries, which included a market economy, liberal democracy and respect to the human rights. Through actions of the European Commission, the EU worked so that the countries of CEE accomplished those norms. The debate about compliance is framed in terms of contending perspectives: enforcement theorists, who advocate the coercive use of sanctions, and the management scholars, who advocate a problem- solving approach. According to the latter, a strategy that seeks to manage compliance through capacity building, rule interpretation, and transparency is more effective in guaranteeing compliance than a coercive one. The hypothesis of this research is that the actions of the Commission for the enlargement were based on the management perspective of compliance with the conditionality norms.