The European Union and its eastern neighbourhood

Europeanisation and its twenty-first-century contradictions

Mike Mannin, Paul Flenley, Mike Mannin

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781526109101
  9781526109095
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526109125
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume is timely in that it explores key issues which are currently at the forefront of the EU's relations with its eastern neighbours. It considers the impact of a more assertive Russia, the significance of Turkey, the limitations of the Eastern Partnership with Belarus and Moldova, the position of a Ukraine in crisis and pulled between Russia and the EU, security and democracy in the South Caucasus. It looks at the contested nature of European identity in areas such as the Balkans. In addition it looks at ways in which the EU's interests and values can be tested in sectors such as trade and migration. The interplay between values, identity and interests and their effect on the interpretation of europeanisation between the EU and its neighbours is a core theme of the volume.

Part I
Concepts and frameworks

1
Europeanisation as a past and present narrative

Michael Mannin

This chapter has two objectives: first, to serve as a conceptual and definitional reference point distinguishing between the related terminologies used in the complex field of Europeanisation; and second, to discuss the premise which recurs in subsequent chapters – that ‘the past is our present reality’. This means that our apparently objective view of what seems contemporary and obvious is actually a construct of the past conceptions of what Europe has been (Flockhart, 2010).

The chapter commences with a discussion of this historical-constructivist approach and then proceeds to examine the prevailing notion of Europeanisation as ‘EU- isation’. It then explores the significance of the Enlightenment and the emergence of, on the one hand, the contemporary paradigm of ‘Europeanism’ and, on the other, the existence of competing interpretations of Enlightenment values that remain to explain what Europe was/is. These interpretations are then explored through an examination of historic periods of Europeanisation. Events in the post-Cold War period have exposed competing legacies of the past and interpretations of Europe's future. The chapter therefore concludes with a summary of the current dilemmas for the EU and its near neighbours that are to some considerable extent a product of these persisting and varied interpretations of Europe's past.

Europeanisation through time and space

A historical constructivist approach brings with it a shifting perspective of what Europe was and is, and thus what it is to be a European today. It also involves a similarly shifting view of what a European ‘other’ comprises (Flockhart, 2010; Giesen, 2003). This means departing from a narrow focus on Europeanisation as EU-isation towards one that exposes causal relationships and diffused patterns of Europeanisation behind its present reality. These can be identified not only within EU Eastern neighbourhood relations, but also as the internal dialogue and division within the EU itself. There are a number of reasons why such an approach is pertinent to the aims of this book. Assumptions about the inevitability of Europeanisation as EU-isation have been challenged by several contemporary circumstances. Internally, the EU has suffered several economic and political shocks in the second decade of the twenty-first century that have not been conducive to deepening and widening its reach. Economic uncertainty and perceived weakness in response to security problems on its Eastern and Southern borders have resulted in a re-evaluation – by new neighbours – of the EU's attractiveness as a pole of security. This has also emerged as an existentialist debate in 2016 following the ‘Brexit’ referendum.

In effect, alternative potentials for Europe's future have emerged and, in order to appreciate the nature of these challenges, an examination of historic Europeanisation as well as observations of national, sub-national, ethnic and cultural memories are salient to an understanding of the present reality of the region. Thus, what Schimmelfennig (2001) characterises as ‘thin Europeanisation’ – that is, the pragmatic acceptance of the constituent rules of the EU – is no longer sufficient to sustain Brussels's impact on the political and economic choices within its new neighbourhood. Without an established set of ‘thick EU values’ involving acceptance of prior norms (i.e. a universal European values set), there is always room for alternative pathways to modernisation, well-being, cultural preservation and societal stability. An alternative pole to the East, Russia, and the growing ambivalence towards a Turkish/EU European destiny, presents a dilemma to other near neighbours when evaluating where their own European futures lie. This is reinforced by the evident lack of any hope of EU membership for near neighbours in the foreseeable future. To complicate matters further, at sub-state level, minority nationalist groups can undermine nation states in seeking the EU as a strategic partner (for example, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Turkey, the Balkans). These problems are explored further in Part II.

In light of these factors, a turn to prior experience, to history and its role in the social construction of the present, would seem imperative in the understanding of ‘present reality’, especially for policy makers and consumers. In a 2015 UK Institute of Government publication, understanding historical viewpoints of those involved and affected by policy, an appreciation of how and why mythologies build up, and ‘getting outside of the now’ were all seen as contributing to ‘historically informed instinctive [sic] analysis’ (Haddon et al., 2015: 6–7). With specific reference to Russia's intervention in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, UK Foreign Office officials were conscious of the limitations of knowledge which is based solely around post-Soviet history. They considered that perspectives from the Cold War and earlier were necessary to appreciate how Russia reviewed its own history. For one UK Foreign Office official, ‘the good news is history back on the agenda – though using it strategically is still a challenge.’ (Haddon et al., 2015: 6).

The contemporary idea of EU-isation rests for its integrity on prior notions of Europeanisation. When examined, each of the periods referred to later, primarily rest on an elite-led selection of values that have both internal and external origins. Each period also brings with it a social construction of a European ‘we’ and a dominant ‘other’ (Mead, 1929). This provides a vista of changing values, rather than a boundary of political geography, of what Europe is today. Europeanisation is thus considered across time and space (Flockhart, 2010) with its norms subject to translation between past and present (Giesen, 2003).

Europeanisation as EU-isation

The concept of Europeanisation has dominated the analysis of the EU and its political systems since the mid-1990s, first, in relation to the deepening of the EU and its influence over domestic member state institutional and policy change during the 1990s following the Single European Act (SEA; 1986) and the Treaty on European Union (TEU; 1992), and more latterly, in observing and evaluating the ‘return to Europe’ of post-Soviet Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), culminating in the enlargements of 2004 and 2007 (Blavoukos and Oikonomou, 2012; Featherstone, 2003). Use of the term EU-isation as a distinct version of Europeanisation (Wallace, 2000) coincided with a period of EU triumphalism mirroring notions of the ‘liberal triumph’ of the West after the events of 1989–91 (Fukuyama, 1992). For many, ‘the hour of Europe’ had arrived (Sakwa, 2015). Thus, it was to the EU that the West – and particularly the USA – looked for the consolidation of a liberal market model for the future of Europe (Mannin, 1999; Sedelmeier and Wallace, 1996).

Such assumptions are reflected in a ‘unilinear’ conceptual framework of EU-sation (Beichelt, 2008). Whether perceived as ‘uploading, downloading or a transversal mechanism’, the EU-isation process starts with an assumption of EU-centricity, with the strategic dominance of the EU as either originator or mediator of domestic and, in some instances, external policy changes for existing and aspirant member states (Börzel, 2002). Thus, our definition of Europeanisation follows that of Ladrech (1994) or Radaelli (2004) and is extended to include the near neighbourhood:

EU-isation is the process of ideational, institutional and policy transformation within EU members and other European states whose major force emanates from the EU as a centre of political discourse … directed towards the achievement of EU core values and political objectives. (Bretherton and Mannin, 2013: 15)

Radaelli's (2003) identification of three domains for analysis – policy, polity and politics – and its associated vocabulary has become an accepted part of the subject's analytical frame. By far the biggest research focus has been on EU-ised policy and its processes (Radaelli, 2003). This has given the subject the now familiar vocabulary of ‘uploading and downloading’, ‘fits and misfits’, ‘veto points’, ‘absorption transformation’, ‘inertia’ and so on. However, as Radaelli states, explanations of the emergence and consequences of a Europeanised member state policy sector cannot be disassociated from polity (institutions) and politics (ideas) that make up the EU and its member states as a composite political system (Radaelli, 2004: 36). Thus, a historical dimension and the significance of cultural diffusion underscores Radaelli's search for an adequate conceptual research bandwidth (Featherstone, 2003).

With these caveats in mind, the main thrust of the most used analytical approach in the field is based on an assumption that EU exported values can be measured against the fairly specific criteria of the acquis communautaire and, more generally, an adherence to a political–legal value set. These are the benchmarks contained within the Copenhagen Criteria (1993) and Agenda 2000 (1998) that shaped the progress of Central and Eastern European states towards membership, which achieved quasi-constitutional status in the Treaty of Lisbon (2007). EU-isation, therefore, creates conditions to be met and a process to be evaluated by EU actors, based on half a century of growing and complex interdependence among an increasingly complex membership underpinned by an assumption of shared, pre-determined and measurable values.

When observing the practice of EU-isation, especially in the application of policy, observers have acknowledged the possibility of a variety of outcomes dependent on a number of variables that challenge the immediate unilinear nature of the process (Börzel, 2005; Cowles and Risse, 2001; Héritier, 2001). Transformation of policies and associated institutional processes are one outcome, others may be adaption or absorption into existing political behaviour. Other responses result in political and bureaucratic inertia and thus nominal or non-compliance and, in some cases, out...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Figures and tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• PART I Concepts and frameworks
• PART II Country/Area studies
• PART III Issues and sectors
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index