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Managing Risks in Europe’s Periphery: The European Neighbourhood Policy

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Book cover Risk and Hierarchy in International Society

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series ((PSIR))

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Abstract

The 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the EU were highly significant events for the Union, in a number of respects. Not only did these enlargements provide membership to many of the post-communist states of Eastern Europe, but they also posed the question of how an enlarged EU would deal with non-EU states in its immediate vicinity. The expansion of the EU through the accession process brought it much closer to identified zones of instability and risk within international society and created a new hierarchy of states both within the EU and between the EU and its new neighbours.1 As Dannreuther notes, enlargement meant that states on the periphery of Europe in Northern Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet republics could no longer be ignored.2 The EU perceives many of the potential globalised security risks that it faces, such as terrorism, transnational crime or illegal immigration, to originate in the areas that now sit immediately alongside the external borders of the Union.

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Notes

  1. Although not a focus of this chapter, an interesting aspect of the 2004 enlargement is the unequal membership conditions that the EU placed on the acceding states. For example, before the enlargement, all 15 member states placed restrictions on the movement of migrants from the Central European states, despite their status as full EU members. See Jon Kvist (2004), ‘Does EU Enlargement Start a Race to the Bottom? Strategic Interaction Among EU Member States in Social Policy’, Journal of European Social Policy 14(3): pp. 301–18.

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  5. As Jeandesboz argues, the European Neighbourhood Policy is structured through two main discursive structures or narratives, the ‘duty narrative’ and the ‘threat narrative’, which represent the EU’s neighbourhood as posing a range of risks that need to be managed. See Julien Jeandesboz (2007), ‘Labelling the “Neighbourhood”: Towards a Genesis of the European Neighbourhood Policy’, Journal of International Relations and Development 10(4): pp. 387–416.

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  35. As Tassinari argues, the bilateral partnership approach of the ENP is thus a veiled form of unilateralism — the EU acts individually in setting the standards and values that it wishes to promote. See Fabrizio Tassinari (1 July 2005), ‘Security and Integration in the EU Neighbourhood: The Case for Regionalism’, CEPS Working Document No. 226 (Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies): p. 5.

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  36. For example, see Smith, ‘The Outsiders’; Browning and Joenniemi, ‘Geostrategies of the European Neighbourhood Policy’ and Hiski Haukkala (2008), ‘The European Union as a Regional Normative Hegemon: The Case of European Neighbourhood Policy’, Europe-Asia Studies 60(9): pp. 1601–22.

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  37. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stressed the need for the international community, including the US, to provide support for Arab states transitioning to democracy. For example see Hillary Rodham Clinton (12 March 2012), ‘Remarks at the United Nations Security Council’, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/03/185623.htm (accessed 10 May 2013).

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  38. Richard G. Whitman and Stefan Wolff (2012), ‘Much Ado about Nothing? The European Neighbourhood Policy in Context’, in Richard G. Whitman and Stefan Wolff (eds), The European Neighbourhood Policy in Perspective: Context, Implementation and Practice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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  39. Peter Seeberg (2009), ‘The EU as a Realist Actor in Normative Clothes: EU Democracy Promotion in Lebanon and the European Neighbourhood Policy’, Democratization 16(1): p. 82. Also see Pace, ‘Paradoxes and Contradictions in EU Democracy Promotion in the Mediterranean’.

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  40. Benita Ferrero-Waldner (17 October 2006), ‘The European Union and Central Asia — Building a 21st Century Partnership’, SPEECH/06/615 (L.N. Gumilyev Eurasian National University, Astana).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of New South Wales, Australia

    William Clapton (Lecturer in International Relations)

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© 2014 William Clapton

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Clapton, W. (2014). Managing Risks in Europe’s Periphery: The European Neighbourhood Policy. In: Risk and Hierarchy in International Society. Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137396372_5

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