The European Neighbourhood Policy in a Comparative Perspective

Models, challenges, lessons

Sieglinde Gstohl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472462985
• eBook ISBN: 9781317033240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has evolved into one of the European Union's major foreign policy instruments and received considerable attention. However, other EU neighbourhood policies, and their relevance for the ENP, also require examination. The Arab uprisings, civil wars in Libya and Syria, the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the crisis in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula have all brought the institutional design and tools of the ENP into question and a comparative perspective is crucial to understand EU neighbourhood policies in a wider sense.

This timely book puts the ENP into context by exploring the major challenges and key lessons of the EU's other policy frameworks with neighbouring countries. Mapping the EU's bi-lateral and multilateral neighbourhood relations in comparison to the ENP and investigating the major challenges faced, it provides a comprehensive, up-to-date view of the EU's relations with its neighbours. Focusing on current affairs and future challenges, the comparison with the ENP and the lessons to be drawn, generate novel insights into the EU's closest external relations.

This book will be of key interest to students and scholars studying European Politics, policies and comparative politics.

1 Introduction

The European Neighbourhood Policy in a comparative perspective

Sieglinde Gstöhl

Introduction: putting the European Neighbourhood Policy in context

This edited volume on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in a comparative perspective aims to identify the policy frameworks between the European Union (EU) and its neighbouring countries and to assess the various challenges that they are facing. It does so with the ultimate aim of drawing some lessons from the ‘other neighbours’ for the ENP.

Whereas the ENP has received considerable attention from scholars and policymakers,¹ the EU’s wider range of neighbourhood policies and their relevance for the evolution of the ENP have attracted much less interest. Launched in 2002–3, in response to the internal and external challenges, the policy has been revised in 2011 and again in 2015.² In fact, most of the EU’s bi- and multilateral neighbourhood relations have recently been under discussion and review. In order to sustain and further improve the ENP, it is crucial to understand the shortcomings and opportunities of EU neighbourhood policies in a wider sense. This book therefore focuses on a comparison of the ENP with the EU’s other frameworks of cooperation: the pre-accession strategy, the EU–Turkey customs union, the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) with the Western Balkans, the European Economic Area (EEA), EU–Swiss bilateralism, the EU–Russia Strategic Partnership and others. A comparative assessment of policy frameworks and a bigger picture of the evolution, the challenges and the coherence of the EU’s relations with its neighbourhood help put the ENP into context. Although the EU’s neighbourhood policies have taken different forms and shapes, there are many common or similar challenges worth exploring, based on a comparative, sectoral and horizontal approach. The book brings together topics that have previously been studied separately in an attempt to generate novel insights into the EU’s closest external relations.

The remainder of this introductory chapter will first recall the main steps in the development of the ENP. It will then present the structure and contents of the volume.

Milestones of the European Neighbourhood Policy

This section first traces the origins of the ENP before focusing on the major weaknesses of the policy: the lack of an EU membership perspective with respect to a clear finalité, and the grouping of two very different regions under one policy umbrella. It then briefly addresses the crises in the southern and eastern dimensions of the ENP and the EU’s response.

The origins and purpose

The concept of neighbourhood emerged in the EU’s discourse in the context of eastern enlargement. In particular, the northern member states called for a new proximity policy to mitigate any negative effects on the western Newly Independent States (NIS). In 2002, the Council asked the European Commission and the High Representative (HR) to prepare a proposal to strengthen the relations with the future eastern neighbours (Delcour 2011: 46–7). In August 2002, the then HR Javier Solana and External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten suggested in a joint letter to the Council the adoption of a proximity policy (Patten and Solana 2002). They divided the neighbours of the EU into three regional groupings: the Mediterranean countries, the Western Balkans and the western NIS – that is, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as Russia. The EU’s policy framework for the first group was the Barcelona Process or Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), the second group fell into the SAP, and the third group had – like some other ex-Soviet republics – negotiated Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs) with the EU in the 1990s.

Whereas the meeting of the Council of the European Union (2002: 12) in November 2002 still focused on Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, one month later the European Council (2002: 7) expanded the neighbourhood initiative to include the southern Mediterranean countries. This broader coverage reflected the EU member states’ different interests in the neighbourhood. Commission President Prodi (2002: 6) proposed a framework for the ENP ‘in which we could ultimately share everything but institutions’. He thereby referred to both ‘our future eastern neighbours and the whole Mediterranean area’ (ibid.: 4). In 2003, the European Commission (2003: 4) published the ‘Wider Europe’ Communication with the objective ‘to avoid drawing new dividing lines in Europe and to promote stability and prosperity within and beyond the new borders of the Union’. It proposed that:

Russia, the countries of the Western NIS and the Southern Mediterranean should be offered the prospect of a stake in the EU’s Internal Market and further integration and liberalisation to promote the free movement of – persons, goods, services and capital (four freedoms).

(ibid.)

However, Russia opted out of the ENP in favour of a more equal, bilateral strategic partnership with the EU (Averre 2005: 178–9). The EU–Russia summit in May 2003 decided instead to pursue the concept of four ‘Common Spaces’ as a basis for this bilateral relationship (EU–Russia Summit 2003). By contrast, in 2004, the three South Caucasian republics were added, and the ENP was finally proposed to sixteen neighbours: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine. ‘The European Neighbourhood Policy’s vision involves a ring of countries, sharing the EU’s fundamental values and objectives, drawn into an increasingly close relationship, going beyond co-operation to involve a significant measure of economic and political integration’ (European Commission 2004: 5). This goal is also highlighted in the first European Security Strategy, which stressed the need ‘to promote a ring of well governed countries to the east of the European Union and on the borders of the Mediterranean’ (European Council 2003: 8).

Among the main instruments of the ENP are Country Reports, Action Plans, Progress Reports, Association Agreements and other agreements, and financial instruments such as the European Neighbourhood Instrument, as well as (inter)regional and cross-border cooperation schemes (Lannon 2012b: 28–45). Overall, the ENP relied to a large extent on the EU’s accession methodology, using similar tools as for the candidate countries in terms of benchmarking, regulatory and legislative approximation, monitoring and reporting, political conditionality, technical and financial assistance, or dialogues. Given that the ENP is modelled on the enlargement policy, the underlying logic has been the same: attempting to shape the neighbourhood by exporting the EU’s norms and values. The European Commission had conceived both policies, and the fact that ‘the ENP has largely been conceptualised within DG Enlargement’ helps explain their similarities (Kelley 2006: 31). ‘As with enlargement, the EU is therefore trying to strike a balance between conditionality and soft diplomatic socialization’ (ibid.: 39). In view of the problems and the lack of efficiency of the decade-long EMP, an EMP-like multilateral approach seemed less attractive than a bilateral approach inspired by enlargement, in combination with much more detailed agenda-setting and closer monitoring than in the EMP.

Nevertheless, two major shortcomings of the ENP were soon criticized: the lack of an EU membership perspective for the (eastern) ENP countries, with respect to the lack of a clear finalité, and the combination under one policy framework of two very different geographical dimensions, with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach rather than sufficient differentiation between and even within the regions (see, for instance, Harpaz 2014; Lehne 2014).

Quo vadis ENP?

When it comes to the end goal of the ENP, the European Commission (2006: 5) introduced in 2006 ‘a longer-term vision of an economic community emerging between the EU and its ENP partners’, which ‘would include such points as the application of shared regulatory frameworks and improved market access for goods and services among ENP partners, and some appropriate institutional arrangement such as dispute settlement mechanisms’. Such a Neighbourhood Economic Community (NEC) could be inspired by the EEA: already, from the start, the European Commission (2003: 15) considered the ENP’s long-term goal was ‘to move towards an arrangement whereby the Union’s relations with the neighbouring countries ultimately resemble the close political and economic links currently enjoyed with the European Economic Area’. The EEA, in 1994, extended the EU’s internal market to the countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), covering the free movement of goods, services, capital and persons, competition rules as well as horizontal and flanking policies.³ The ENP also offers ‘neighbouring countries the prospect of a stake in the EU Internal Market based on legislative and regulatory approximation’ (European Commission 2004: 14). However, there is no precise definition of the concept of a future NEC. It would build on the full implementation of the Action Plans and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) and on increased intraregional integration between the ENP partners themselves. Yet any such economic community would need to be supported with appropriate institutional structures (European Commission 2007: 8).

With regard to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, the ENP has been complemented by two regional dimensions: the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the Eastern Partnership (EaP). Already, the Barcelona Process, launched in 1995, was based on the principles of joint ownership, dialogue and cooperation, seeking to create a Mediterranean region of peace, security and shared prosperity. On France’s initiative, in 2008, this EMP was relaunched as the Union for the Mediterranean and enlarged.⁴ The UfM has a functional secretariat in Barcelona and runs a number of projects, such as the de-pollution of the Mediterranean Sea, better infrastructure connections, a solar energy plan, a joint civil protection programme and a business development initiative.

In response to this southern turn, and the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, the European Council (2008: 19), based on a Polish–Swedish proposal, invited the Commission to prepare a proposal for an EaP, emphasizing the need for a differentiated approach while ‘respecting the character of the ENP as a single and coherent policy framework’. The EaP’s bilateral track includes the upgrading of contractual relations towards Association Agreements, including DCFTAs, progressive visa liberalization and closer cooperation on energy security. The multilateral track comprises four thematic policy platforms: democracy, good governance and stability; economic integration and convergence with EU policies; energy security; and contacts between people. In addition, it features a number of flagship initiatives such as integrated border management, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, civil protection, energy efficiency and good environmental governance.

The creation of the two geographical dimensions as complements to the ENP has not only underlined the diversity of the partner countries but also demonstrated that the EU member states still pursue different foreign policy priorities and interests. In addition, severe crises in the two regions in the following years called for further adaptations of the ENP.

Crises in the south: the Arab Spring

At the end of 2010, the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia with rapid, unexpected spillover effects in the region. Under massive popular pressure, Tunisian President Ben Ali left the country, Egyptian President Mubarak stepped down, and the Libyan leader Gaddafi went into hiding before being killed. Unrest in Algeria, Jordan and Morocco was managed in a more or less non-violent manner, while in Syria – as in Libya – civil war broke out. The EU responded to these momentous changes with the launch of the Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity with the southern Mediterranean, which called for a differentiated, ‘more for more’ approach under which increased support in terms of financial assistance, enhanced mobility and better market access is made available to those partner countries most advanced in the consolidation of reforms (European Commission and High Representative 2011a). This emphasis on ‘money, mobility and markets’ for the turbulent south was followed by a first strategic review of the entire ENP that put a strong focus on the promotion of deep, sustainable democracy, accompanied by inclusive economic development, as well as on a ‘more for more’ approach that promised ‘a much higher level of differentiation allowing each partner country to develop its links with the EU as far as its own aspirations, needs and capacities allow’ (European Commission and High Representative 2011b: 2). The Arab Spring confronted the EU and its member states with their previous support of seemingly stable authoritarian regimes in the region. In reaction to this past mistake, the EU increased its support for civil society and emerging political actors with new instr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations and acronyms
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction The European Neighbourhood Policy in a comparative perspective
• 2 Mapping the European Union's neighbourhood relations The European Economic Area as a ‘prototype' for the integration of EU neighbours?
• Part 1 Multilateral EU neighbourhood relations
• Part 2 Bilateral EU neighbourhood relations
• Part 3 Political, legal and security challenges
• Part 4 Socio-economic and financial challenges
• Index