CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 63
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CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 63
Editorial by Michael Emerson: "Here is your opinion of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) ..."
As announced a month ago we have invited readers to respond to a simple questionnaire on perceptions of the ENP. Here are the summary results (the link to details is given below).
There were 248 valid responses, half of whom were independent analysts from the EU, with fewer but still useful numbers of responses by independents from the ENP partner states, officials of the EU or its member states, and finally from individuals from third countries (Russia, US, rest of the world). More respondents were concerned by Eastern Europe than the South Mediterranean, but many were answering for both regions together. The respondents come from this newsletter's e-mail data base, which consists of people who are in some way involved in or interested in EU external policies, and so are well or even very well informed individuals. So it is an interested elite sample, and not a representative public opinion survey.
The overall summary result about whether the ENP has been successful of not in achieving its objectives of strengthening the prosperity, stability and security of the region was as follows:
Very successful 4.6%
Moderately successful 34.0%
Little or no impact 59.0%
Counterproductive 2.4%
As between the three objectives the results were somewhat more positive for stability, than for prosperity and security.
The results show some interesting differences and similarities by group of respondents. The independents from the EU and the ENP partner states are strikingly similar. In both cases the numbers of outlying and extreme views (very successful and counterproductive) are very small. As regards the predominant results in the two intermediate categories, both groups of respondents are showing a pattern of roughly 1/3rd ‘moderately successful' and 2/3rds ‘little or no impact'.
Officials from the EU and its member states have a somewhat more positive view, maybe reflecting in many cases their personal professional commitment to the policy, or a case of slightly rose-tinted spectacles. However the difference of view with the independents is only one of degree, with the officials dividing between the ‘moderately successful' (45%) versus ‘little or no impact' (55%). The officials are also more restrained in their views since they scored absolutely zero for either the ‘very successful' or ‘counterproductive' answers.
While these official views are perhaps unsurprising, a more intriguing result comes from the respondents from third countries (Russia, US, and the rest of the world). Here there were considerably larger proportions of views considering the policy to have been ‘very successful' on account of the stability (28.6%) and security (22.9%) objectives. We can only speculate why this should be so. Is it because these respondents are less well informed about the policy? Or is it because they have a different and possibly more realistic perspective, noting perhaps that the EU has a very extensive engagement with its neighbours, framed in positive terms, and one that is categorically different from alternative models of really bad neighbourly relations that do exist elsewhere in the world. (e.g. tensions over unresolved territorial border disputes, or politico-economic pressurisation with threats of use of force by regional hegemons).
The reasons for the majority view of ‘little or no impact' are not hard to find. At the top of the list, especially for the Eastern neighbours, is likely to be the impact of disappointed aspirations for accession to the European Union, or more precisely the refusal of the EU to grant the magic words ‘membership perspectives', even for the long run. Experience of the EU's recent enlargements has shown how the accession process galvanises the whole state apparatus and leading sectors of the economy into adopting EU political norms and technical standards, and in addition the amounts of financial assistance are macroeconomically significant. The ENP has devoted a lot of effort to the progressive adoption of the EU ‘acquis', yet the motivating force for doing this in the partner states has been faint, and the amounts of financial assistance are relatively limited.
This obvious point over ‘membership perspectives' is the result of political decision at the highest level, and it goes beyond the mandate of the Commission as executors of the ENP to change it. But it is still important to look at the reasons for the perceived ‘little or no impact' at the next level down of major policy components. At the political level the objective has been to negotiate new ‘advanced agreements', within which two of the most important main lines of action concern the movement of persons and trade, where the keywords from the EU side have been ‘visa facilitation' and ‘deep and comprehensive free trade agreement (DCFTA)'. While in the South Mediterranean neighbourhood Morocco, which already had a basic free trade agreement, has signed an ‘advanced agreement', this has not yet been the case for either Ukraine or Georgia with whom negotiations are ongoing. For these general (political and economic) agreements with the Eastern partners the DCFTA is intended to be the flagship economic component is intended to be. However, it has not yet been possible yet to conclude a DCFTA with Ukraine, whereas the Commission has not yet even agreed to open negotiations for Georgia, despite the fact that Georgia has unilaterally adopted a basic free trade policy with the entire world, including the EU. As regards visa facilitation, the positive innovations under this heading seem to have been slight or invisible to the people concerned, whereas the earlier negative impact of the introduction of visas by the new member states towards the Eastern partner states really hurt. Visa liberalisation (i.e. visa free regimes) are now discussed as a prospect, but are as yet far from a reality. Also, while civil society cooperation has been billed with a high priority, the EU's financial aid instruments to support NGOs remain incredibly burdensome and user-unfriendly. This problem is a well known problem for which solutions have not yet been found.
Finally these survey results are surely influenced by how the ENP is framed in the communications efforts of the EU. While the Commission has been investing in a new and attractive information instrument (the web portal http://www.enpi-info.eu) there are serious communications problems in the top level political messages. First of all neither the Eastern nor South Mediterranean partners have been happy over being in the same ENP boat together. These regions have nothing in common politically, culturally or historically, or thence in terms of identity. But then this awkward amalgam became additionally confused by the problems of understanding what the ENP to the South is in relation to the Barcelona process and more recently the Union for the Mediterranean, and to the East how the ENP relates to the newer Eastern Partnership initiative. Connoisseurs of EU policy know the bureaucratic answers, but that does not solve the communications problem.
The Commission and High Representative for foreign and security policy have launched a review of the ENP after its first five years. These survey results (available here) provide a corrective to those in the EU institutions who at times simply proclaim the ENP to be a success, and their interpretation may lead into useful reconsideration of various elements of the policy.
Michael EMERSON, CEPS Senior Research Fellow