In this study, I analyzed the influence of the European Union on the development of waste management policies and practices in the candidate and newly accessed countries. Currently, the EU is the main driving force for the developments in the waste management area in these countries. Thus the direction toward which the EU leads them has a deliberating effect on how successfully these countries are able to adopt sustainability principles and put them into action. Because waste management is generally of primary environmental importance in most countries, the sustainability levels of waste management practices highly influence the general sustainability level of these countries' ecological interactions. The findings in this regard provide considerable ground for taking on a skeptical position on the sustainability implications of the EU's presence in the relevant developments in Greece, Hungary and Turkey.