Abstract The EU's political conditionality during the 2004 enlargement process recorded significant progress but imperfect implementation. But what has happened since post-Communist countries joined the EU three years ago now that the leverage of Brussels has ceased? This article develops an analytical approach to answer this question and applies it to the two cases of Slovakia and Latvia during the first three years of membership, showing some further progress with conditionality matters but also a rather mixed picture. Altogether, there is no common pattern whereby conditionalty loses momention and becomes unscrambled even though the drive behind enlargement has been the crucial force driving conditionality policy.