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Eastern enlargement has been celebrated as the success story of the "transformative power of Europe". Indeed, accession to the EU significantly reinforced the processes of democratic transition and socio-economic modernization in Central and Eastern Europe. So it had for Spain and Portugal 20 years before. At the same time, accession posed a formidable challenge to transition countries. Policy overload and tremendous implementation costs met with weak state capacities largely tied up in managing the political and economic transition process. This paper examines how Spain and Portugal have coped with the adoption of and adaptation to European environmental policy when they joined the EC in 1986. We explore to what extent the governments of the two Southern European accession countries sought to enlist the help of business and civil society in taking on the environmental acquis communautaire giving rise to the emergence of so called new modes of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]