Introduction : how to study the politics of the European Neighbourhood Policy? -- ENP narratives : reproduction and reconstruction under crises -- Narratives and strategies of EU actors -- External responses and usages of ENP narratives -- Conclusion : politics, legitimacy and beyond.
Despite growing scholarly interest in the EU's flagship policy towards its Eastern and Southern neighbours, serious attempts at theory-building on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have been largely absent from the academic debate. This book aims at contributing to fill this research gap in a three-fold manner: first and foremost it aims at theorizing the ENP as such, explaining the origins, development and effectiveness of this policy. Building on this effort, it also pursues the broader objective of addressing certain shortcomings in EU external relations theory, and even beyond, in International Relations theory. Finally, it aspires to provide new insights for European policy-makers. It is one of the first volumes to provide different theoretical perspectives on the ENP by revisiting and building bridges between mainstream and critical theories, stimulating academic and policy debates and thus setting a novel, less EU-centric research agenda. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU external relations, EU foreign policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy, and more broadly in European Union Politics and International Relations. --
The debate about the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has, in essence, been about borders and bordering. Such departures could contribute — and often do so — to a rather fixed geopolitical vision of what the EU is about and how it aims to run and to organize the broader European space. However, this article aims to retain space for viewing the ENP as a developmental and somewhat fluid process. A conceptual framework, based on outlining three geopolitical models and a series of different geopolitical strategies employed by the EU in regard to its borders, is hence employed in order to be able to tell a more dynamic story regarding the developing nature of the ENP and the EU's evolving nature more generally. The complexity traced informs us that various geostrategies may be held at the same time at the external border. Moreover, the dominance of one geostrategy may be replaced by another or a different combination of them with regard to the same neighbourhood. It is, more generally, argued that if anything it is precisely this dynamism that should be championed as a valuable resource, avoiding the tendency to close off options through the reification of particular visions of the nature of the EU and its borders.
The purpose of this article is to explore the future of the EU's Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in terms of its objectives. In order to do this, the reasons behind this policy tool, its structure, and the changes it brought to the EU's relationships with its neighbours are analyzed. The article investigates the areas in which the ENP has been successful and pinpoints the deficiencies which have lead to its failure in other areas. The analysis concludes that the ENP has enhanced the EU's role in the international arena and improved the credibility of its foreign, security and defence policies despite the fact that it is still a very new policy. Nevertheless, the policy is by no means perfect and there exists scope for further improvement in terms of its effectiveness. ; peer-reviewed
The debate about the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has, in essence, been about borders and bordering. Such departures often contribute to rather fixed geopolitical visions of what the EU is about and how it aims at running and organising the broader European space. In contrast, this paper aims at retaining space for viewing the ENP as a developmental and somewhat fluid process. A conceptual framework, based on the outlining of three geopolitical models and a series of different geostrategies employed by the EU in regard to its borders, is hence utilized in order to tell a more dynamic story regarding the developing nature of the ENP and the EU's evolving nature more generally. The complexity traced informs that various geostrategies may be held at the same time at the external border. Moreover, the dominance of one geostrategy may be replaced by another or a different combination of them with regard to the same neighbourhood. It is, more generally, argued that if anything it is precisely this dynamism that should be championed as a valuable resource and as such avoiding the tendency to close off options through the reification of particular visions of the nature of the EU and ist borders.
This Working Paper offers a selection of the papers which were presented during the Workshop on "The European Neighbourhood Policy – A Framework for Modernisation?", which was held on 1-2 December 2006 at the European University Institute of Florence under the auspices of the Academy of European Law. In particular, this Working Paper intends to explore from a trans-disciplinary perspective the objectives and instruments which have been devised in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and to consider in this light the capacity of the policy to promote a fundamental process of modernisation in the target countries. This is done in the conviction that a reconsideration of the coherence between instruments and objectives of the ENP is particularly urgent and it is likely to affect not only the effectiveness of the policy itself, but also the ability of the EU to create a circle of friends around its borders and, ultimately, its position in the international arena. To achieve this task, we have brought together the viewpoints of lawyers, political scientists and economists as they look at the wide range of questions prompted by the ENP. The first part of this volume is devoted to the analysis of the Objectives of the ENP. In this framework, a first paper will scrutinise the expectations from the new policy, then 5 more papers will examine the 3 major articulated objectives of the policy: stability, prosperity and security. The second part of the volume is focused on the Instruments of ENP. In particular, 3 papers will focus on legislative approximation and on the analysis of the tools which have been used in order to promote an unprecedented process of Europeanisation which goes far beyond the European continent. The last 2 papers have been devoted to the consideration of bilateralism-multilateralism and to the scrutiny of solutions which can be envisaged legally to develop the partnership with neighbouring countries in the framework of the ENP.