European Neighbourhood Policy Countries Research Articles

Overview of risk assessment activities for the food safety area in East European Neighbourhood Policy countries

The EU's European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) promotes stability, security and prosperity in neighbouring countries. It builds on common interests and a shared commitment to cooperate on key priority areas including food safety. This technical report presents a summary of an online workshop held on 4 November 2020, with East European Neighbourhood (ENP-East) countries and contributions from the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Commission (DG SANTE and DG-NEAR), the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung, BfR) and the Institute of Food safety, Animal Health and Environment "BIOR" of Latvia.The aim of the workshop was to present the current status of risk assessment activities in the six ENP-East countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), discuss the challenges they face and explore opportunities for cooperation with the European Union (EU) and other international organisations. A summary of the presentations is provided along with relevant key risk assessment activities in each country. Contributions from EFSA and the WHO are also included. Opportunities and challenges for the food safety area are discussed particularly to further enhance risk assessment capabilities in ENP countries through cooperation, capacity building and staff exchange between ENP, EU and international organisations as the most efficient tools to achieve such goals.

Help your neighbor, help yourself: The drivers of European Union's climate cooperation in trans‐governmental networks with its neighbors

AbstractClimate change mitigation and adaptation are among the policy areas covered by the European Union (EU) in trans‐governmental cooperation with the neighboring countries. Although this cooperation is open to all European Neighborhood Policy countries and Russia, there is significant cross‐country variance. This article maps the EU's climate networks in the neighborhood and, building on time‐series cross‐sectional data analysis, explains the cross‐country differences. The study contributes to Europeanization and network governance literatures by demonstrating that the main driver of EU engagement in climate networks in the region is interdependencies stemming from geographic proximity. Meanwhile, state capacity is an important condition for establishing climate cooperation: climate cooperation develops more with closer neighbors that have stronger state capacity. Importantly, contrary to the logic of its international climate commitments, climate vulnerabilities do not define the extent of the EU's engagement in climate networks with its neighborhood.

Accident Damage Analysis Module (ADAM): Novel European Commission tool for consequence assessment—Scientific evaluation of performance

This paper summarises the scientific evaluation of the performance of a novel modelling tool, the Accident Damage Assessment Module (ADAM), developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC) to assess the consequences of an industrial accident resulting from an unintended release of a dangerous substance. The ADAM tool is specifically intended to assist Competent Authorities in the European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA), and their supporting research institutions, responsible for the implementation of the Seveso Directive in their countries, as well as governmental and research organisations of EU Accession and Candidate Countries, and European Neighbourhood Policy countries involved in chemical accident prevention and preparedness. In particular, the tool provides decision-making support to various functions associated with industrial risk management, enforcement and oversight, including risk analysis, land-use and emergency planning, inspection and monitoring, and the preparation and review of safety reports.Consequence assessment models are characterised by high level of complexity and of uncertainty. It is therefore of paramount importance to assess their limits. The scientific evaluation was conducted across the entire consequence assessment cycle, including the source terms and the physical effects calculations associated with the concentration toxics after airborne dispersion, the thermal radiation of chemical fires, and the explosion of vapour flammable clouds. The evaluation described in this paper was conducted on a series of relevant scenarios, by benchmarking the outcome of ADAM with the results obtained by similar software tools and with the experimental data obtained on a series of reference field campaigns, as taken from the literature.

Effectiveness of EU Transgovernmental Cooperation in the Neighbourhood: Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Twinning Projects in Ukraine

While the Europeanisation literature has examined several aspects of EU transgovernmental cooperation under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), very little is yet known as to the extent and the conditions under which such cooperation effectively transfers EU norms to ENP countries. Using a qualitative comparative analysis of 32 Twinning projects in Ukraine, the article finds that legal and institutional convergence with EU norms has occurred mainly because of the policy fit of a Twinning project with the needs and technical capacities of the beneficiary administration, notwithstanding sector politicisation, EU sectoral conditionality or the quality of socialisation between civil servants.

One wave of reforms, many outputs: the diffusion of European asylum policies beyond Europe

ABSTRACTSince the 1990s, 13 of the 15 states of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have passed asylum policy reforms. Yet, while some of the reforms have resulted in an alignment with European asylum policies, others have not. To account for the scope and content of asylum policy reform in the ENP states, a wide array of possible explanatory factors has been advanced in the literature. However, current explanations remain on a case-specific level, and thus fall short of accounting for the broader variation in asylum policy reform in the EU's neighbourhood. This article seeks to identify the relevant drivers of alignment with European asylum policies, employing a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) across 13 ENP countries. The results show that ENP states align with European asylum policies in two cases: first, if they are electoral democracies and face moderate migratory pressures; second, if they are electoral democracies and hold EU membership aspirations.

The Role of EU Agencies in the Acquis Transfer: The Case of the European Neighbourhood Policy Countries

Since the mid-2000s, a large number of EU agencies became involved in transferring the EU acquis to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries. EU agencies focus on the institution-building and enhancing the capacity of third countries to bring their standards closer to the EU norms. At the same time, the extent of their involvement varies across policy fields, countries, and agencies: some EU agencies have strong institutionalised ties with third states, while others establish only ad hoc cooperation. Despite their active involvement in the neighbourhood, the external dimension of EU agencies remains largely unexplored; neither do we know what explains the variance in agencies’ openness to participation of third countries. The paper fills this research gap by providing a systematic mapping of the transgovernmental outreach of EU agencies to the ENP countries across different policy domains and by explaining the variance across agencies and countries. It demonstrates that the external activities of EU agencies follow the sector-specific interdependency dynamics rather than the principal foreign policy goals of the EU. Such external cooperation patterns focus on the technocratic networks and the EU regulatory state building outside its borders that goes beyond the political boundaries of the regional integration endeavours of the EU.

Promoting democracy through economic conditionality in the ENP: a normative critique

This article presents a normative critique of the coherence of democracy promotion in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). As an immanent critique, the paper derives its normative standards internally from an analysis of key ENP policy documents. It is argued that democracy promotion is in conflict with some of the other goals of the ENP such as market liberalisation, trade policy reforms and private sector development. Further, the incentive of market integration is argued to undermine democracy promotion. Though the ENP’s current way of pursuing the goal of democratisation is normatively incoherent, this article also argues that incentivising democratisation through conditionality is not inherently contradictory. Two potential ways democratisation could be coherently promoted are suggested: delimiting the policy to unilateral transfers conditional on democratisation alone (‘simple transfers’), or offering EU membership to ENP countries (‘no integration without incorporation’).

Spatial dynamics and agglomeration forces in the external EU periphery

The countries belonging to the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) of the EU are characterized by significant socioeconomic transformations and—more recently—by disconcerting instances of social and political turmoil. This comes to add to social and economic pressures applied to these countries under their process of market liberalization and economic integration, instigated at least in part by the very ENP process. In those conditions, questions of spatial cohesion and thus of regional convergence and divergence become increasingly salient, as the elimination of (social and) spatial imbalances is both a precondition for the legitimacy and successful implementation of the reforms aiming at market liberalization and economic integration and a core objective of such reforms. In this paper, we examine the spatial dynamics of population growth in the ENP countries prior to the recent destabilization in the region, using two complementary approaches—an analysis of the impact of agglomeration on growth and an analysis of club formation in population concentrations (convergence–divergence). We find that, on the whole, the ENPCs South space was characterized in recent years by evidence of regional convergence in the sense that population concentrations were becoming more diffused across regions; while the ENPCs East exhibited stronger and more consistent evidence of regional divergence (increased concentration of population). These findings suggest that agglomeration and cumulative causation forces are more strongly in operation in the more advanced, at least in terms of EU relations, countries of the ENP East, where also the “pull” factor of the EU economy is stronger.

Spatial Heterogeneity and Economic Dualism in European Neighbourhood Policy Countries

This article studies how spatial heterogeneity (by urban concentration) and economic heterogeneity (by economic dualism), which are being affected by trade integration with the EU, influence the growth of European Neighbourhood Policy countries (ENPs). It is proved that urban concentration is not always related to growth. Furthermore, the eastern and southern areas of the ENPs represent two different cases of heterogeneity. In the eastern ENPs the pattern of heterogeneity seems to generate more benefits for the metropolitan region and the country in comparison with the southern ENPs in which population accumulations do not function as critical foundations of their development process.

The Geography of Foreign Investments in the EU Neighbourhood

AbstractThis paper aims at investigating the drivers of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) investment in countries linked to the ‘core’ of the European Union (EU 15) by different degrees of functional, economic and political integration: the EU ‘new’ Member States, accession and candidate countries, European Neighbourhood Policy countries, as well as Russia. Understanding the drivers of foreign direct investment (FDI) in these countries is highly relevant in consideration of their increasing integration into the global market and the strong influence exerted by the EU on this process. By employing data on individual greenfield investment projects for the period 2003 to 2008, this paper aims to disentangle the drivers of FDI in these countries for different industrial sectors, business functions and investment origins. The empirical results suggest that FDI in the area tends to follow market‐seeking and efficiency‐oriented strategies, and show path‐dependency and concentration patterns that may reinforce core‐periphery development trajectories in the EU neighbourhood.

A Comparative Perspective on Institutional Quality in Countries at Different Stages of European Integration

AbstractThe paper investigates changes in institutional quality in countries at different stages of European integration over the seven‐year period from 2004‐11. It analyses two countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) region, two from the Western Balkans and two EU Member States from South East Europe. The analysis reveals differences between the country groups in the extent of institutional convergence, in perceptions of corruption and in the pace of democratic consolidation. Analysis of changes in a newly constructed index of institutional quality in the public sector reveals a further falling behind the EU in some key dimensions. We conclude that the EU did not play an important role as a ‘transformative power’ in the two ENP countries over the period up to 2012, and that the process of institutional reform was incomplete due to an absence of a clear European perspective.

Economic Institutions and the Location Strategies of European Multinationals in their Geographic Neighborhood

abstractThis article investigates how the location behavior of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is shaped by the economic institutions of the host countries. The analysis covers a wide set of geographically proximate economies with different degrees of integration with the old fifteen European Union members: new member states, accession and candidate countries, as well as European Neighborhood Policy countries and the Russian Federation. The article aims to shed new light on the heterogeneity of MNE preferences for the host countries’ regulatory settings (including labor market and business regulation), legal aspects (i.e., protection of property rights and contract enforcement), and the weight of the government in the economy. By employing data on 6888 greenfield investment projects, the random-coefficient mixed logit analysis shows that, although the quality of the national institutional framework is generally beneficial for the attraction of foreign investment, MNEs’ preferences over economic institutions are highly heterogeneous across sectors and business functions.

The European Union and its neighboring countries: The economic geography of trade, Foreign Direct Investment and development

This Editorial looks at the process of political and economic integration between the European Union and the European Neighborhood Policy countries with a special focus on the processes linked to trade flows, Foreign Direct Investment and their spatial impacts. This Editorial highlights the key ‘unanswered’ questions in the existing literature and explores outstanding conceptual and empirical challenges, discussing how the various papers included in the Theme Issue can provide systematic coherent answers to a number of these research questions. The Editorial includes a synopsis of the key findings of the papers and highlights their connections and linkages. It concludes with open questions for further research and a potential agenda for future conceptual and empirical analyses in this area.

Relatedness and diversification in the European Union (EU-27) and European Neighbourhood Policy countries

This paper analyzes the process of industrial diversification in the countries that were part of the European Union (EU-27) and those that were the target of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in the period 1995–2010 by means of world trade data derived from the BACI database (elaborated UN Comtrade data). Our results show that in both the EU-27 and the ENP countries, the evolution of the productive structure—as proxied by the export mix—is strongly path-dependent: countries tend to keep a comparative advantage in products that are strongly related to their current productive structure, and they also diversify in nearby products. However, this effect is much stronger for ENP countries, signalling their lower resources and capabilities to diversify in products that are not very related to their productive structure. We also show that the future export structures of countries are affected by their imports: both the EU-27 and ENP countries keep a comparative advantage in products that are strongly related to their imports, but only EU countries show a strong capability to diversify in new products from related import sectors. Our results also hold when controlling for geographical and institutional proximity.

Regional inequalities in the European Neighborhood Policy countries: The effects of growth and integration

The paper explores the spatial dynamics in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) countries, in a period of significant transformations in their internal and external economic environment. Regional disparities are reported to be the net outcome of two opposite dynamics: a pro-cyclical pattern, on the one hand, with dynamic and developed regions growing faster in periods of expansion and slower in periods of recession, and a long-term spread effect, on the other, partly offsetting the cumulative impact of growth on space after some critical level of development. In this framework, expanding trade relations with the European Union advanced countries may be an additional source of spatially unbalanced growth and polarization for the ENP countries, as the costs and benefits of integration prove to be unevenly allocated in space. To the extent that growth and integration dynamics tend to polarize the ENP economic space, a set of critical policy questions arise.

Integrating the Neighbors: A Dynamic Panel Analysis of the EU-ENP Countries’ Trade Relations

The paper investigates the impact of trade relations among the European Union (EU) 7 and the European Neighborhood Policy countries, the ENPCs, on the economic performance of the latter. The analysis uses panel data for 14 ENPCs over the period 2000–2011 and recently developed panel cointegration techniques. The results of the analysis indicate that the effects of trade integration with the EU on ENPCs growth performance may depend on the development gap between trade partners. Deeper trade integration with the higher-income EU countries is found to have a negative impact on the growth performance of the ENPCs. In contrast, deeper trade integration with the middle- and lower-income EU countries is found to have a positive growth impact. The findings of the paper highlight the limits of integration among unequal partners, but also the need for a geographically more balanced pattern of trade relations that will improve growth prospects in the external and internal EU periphery.

Immigrants from ENP countries and employment dismissal in Spain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to check if the rate of employment dismissal in the Spanish labour market is higher for immigrants from countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) than for the native-born and the immigrants from other developing countries. It also analyses the impact on this rate of the lower endowment of human capital and the segregation in particular occupations and sectors of ENP immigrants. Design/methodology/approach – The study exploits micro-data from the Labour Force Survey before and during the great depression in Spain. The authors define two groups of immigrants, one for those whose origin is an ENP country and another for those from the rest of the developing countries. Then the rate of job loss is computed for the natives and the two groups of immigrants based on the information for each individual in the sample for each of the years under analysis. An empirical model for the probability of employment dismissal is estimated to check if the immigrant-native gap...

EU Democracy Promotion in Eastern ENP Countries

This study shows that the increased incentive structures from and the more intense socialization process with the European Union (EU) since the launch of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) have not translated into a higher level of democratic development in Eastern ENP countries. However, on the long run (1991–2010), the EU democracy promotion in the region under consideration appears to be largely consistent. In addition, a content analysis of Progress Reports released by the European Commission on the implementation process of European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plans (ENPAPs) reveals that some Eastern neighbours of the EU have attempted to consider in their reform agendas the democracy-related objectives of these documents and that some have also sought to adopt international democratic instruments as required by the ENPAPs. Though the record is far from satisfactory on norm internalization, content analysis of Commission’s Reports suggests that one should acknowledge a modest democratization role for the EU.

Refugee Quota Trading within the Context of EU-ENP Cooperation: Rational, Bounded Rational and Ethical Critiques

In 1997 Peter Schuck proposed a ‘refugee quota trading’ mechanism, whereby countries voluntarily form a union, each country accepting a quota of refugees and able to buy and sell the quota to other states within and even outside of the union. Today, the EU arguably has a de facto cash transfer mechanism both within the EU and between the EU and European Neighbourhood Policy countries. This article explores the question of refugee quota trading, explaining why current EU policy fails to increase refugee protection. Throughout the critique, states are treated either as rational actors or actors with present-preference bias, the latter largely ignored in current discussions on international refugee ‘burden sharing’. In addition, the ethics of refugee quota trading is presented using arguments distinct from that of Anker et al. (1998) who argue that refugee quota trading creates a ‘commodification’ of refugees. One could argue that refugees’ protection is being commodified, not refugees themselves. However, when states are provided funds not to deport refugees, this can be a type of reward for not taking an action that states ought to follow regardless of the reward. Just as there are non-utilitarian reasons not to rely on rewards alone for lowering the crime rates for heinous crimes within states, there may be non-utilitarian arguments against refugee quota trading.

Democracy promotion through functional cooperation? The case of the European Neighbourhood Policy

This contribution explores whether and under what conditions functional sectoral cooperation between the EU and the countries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) promotes democratic governance. In an analysis of four countries (Jordan, Moldova, Morocco, and Ukraine) and three fields of cooperation (competition, environment, and migration policy), we show that country properties such as the degree of political liberalization, membership aspirations, and geographic region do not explain differences in democratic governance. Rather, sectoral conditions such as the codification of democratic governance rules, the institutionalization of functional cooperation, interdependence, and adoption costs matter most for the success of democratic governance promotion. We further reveal a notable discrepancy between adoption and application of democratic governance in the selected ENP countries that has not been remedied in the first five years of the ENP.