The 2011 Revised European Neighbourhood Policy: Continuity and Change in EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

The EU’s relations with its eastern and southern neighbours have never attracted as much attention as in recent years. The outbreak of what was prematurely called the ‘Arab Spring’ in early 2011, the fall of supposedly consolidated autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the eruption and continuation of the civil war in Syria, the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Daesh), the military coup of 3 July 2013 in Egypt leading to the ousting of the first ever democratically elected civilian Egyptian president, the Euromaidan revolution of 2013/2014 and the subsequent Russian annexation of the Crimea, followed by the emergence of territorial conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian military and paramilitary forces in eastern parts of Ukraine, growing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the deterioration of democratic standards and practices in Georgia, Moldova’s backsliding to corrupt and unresponsive (oligarchic) rule, unprecedented waves of human displacement—these are just some of the many dramatic developments in the EU’s neighbourhood that have recently emerged on the agenda of EU foreign-policy makers. In conjunction with the remnants of the financial and economic crisis, affecting both EU member states and European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) partner countries in the EU’s neighbourhood, and the persistence and re-emergence of ‘stubborn authoritarianism’, these developments have exposed the EU’s ENP to challenges unthinkable when it was originally launched in 2003. In parallel, EU membership of central and eastern European countries in 2004 and 2007, Croatia’s accession to the EU in 2013, the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty and thus the creation of the European External Action Service (EEAS), have altered the EU and EU foreign policy making towards the neighbourhood from within.