The enlargement policy needs to mobilise people within the EU and its acceeding countries. Without active engagement and positive support of citizens and civil society, it is highly unlikely that necessary changes will happen. Information is a precondition for active involvement. This is where the Progress Report Monitor starts. The objective is to make the EU enlargement process more concrete and visible - concrete and visible for sceptics of the process as well.

Candidate countries have to transpose the entire European law into national legislation and implement it before they accede the European Union. The so called acquis communautaire is divided into 35 different policy areas, commonly known as chapters. The European Commission annually publishes its "Progress Reports" - a set of documents summarising the current status and progress achieved by each country in the accession process. Both the current status and the progress achieved are assessed by the Commission according to a five-tier standard assessment scale. The scale used for status is as follows:

• Early stage
• Some level of preparation
• Moderately prepared
• Good level of preparation
• Well advanced

The scale used for assessing progress in the past 12 months is as follows:

• Backsliding
• No progress
• Some progress
• Good progress
• Very good progress

In its 2014 Enlargement Strategy, the Commission introduced the notion of "fundamentals first" and stressed that three pillars of the EU accession process are priorities: the rule of law, economic governance and public administration reform. In its assessment of these fundamentals, the Commission draws on its established evaluation methodology.