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The article tries to analyze the human rights conditionality in the EU's enlargement process. Until the Amsterdam Treaty entered into force, the observance of human rights was not one of the preconditions of membership of the EC and there was no any formal requirements, apart from to be a European State. After the EU decided on a number of political criteria for accession to be met by candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a new passage was incorporated into Article 49 of the Amsterdam Treaty. According to Article 49 only a European State "which respects the principles set out in Article 6(1) may apply to become a member of the Union." The principles enumerated in Article 6(1) were regarded as confirmation of the Copenhagen political criteria within the text of the EU. Therefore, membership of the EU necessarily means that the political accession criteria in 6(1) are met. The current applicant states were measured against the Copenhagen criteria and EU decided to start the accession negotiations with all ten post-communist states