CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 62
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CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 62
What is your opinion of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)?
This ‘editorial’ expresses no opinions. Instead it solicits yours.
The ENP has now passed its 5th anniversary and the EU foreign ministers’ Council have tasked High Representative Catherine Ashton and the Commission to undertake a review of it by early 2011.
Has the ENP worked well or not? As independent analysts we intend to contribute to this policy review as an own initiative, publishing of course the views which we will present to the EU. We begin this process with the present short questionnaire (linked below) which is thus submitted to the 9,000 recipients of the CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. We invite readers to participate by responding to the questionnaire linked below. If the response is sufficiently encouraging we will follow this up with a more structured second questionnaire, and so get closer to providing policy-operational advice to the EU.
We hope many of you will respond since we have in our hands a uniquely valuable potential source of information for the policy makers of the EU and its partner states. The e-mail list of subscribers has been built up over the last years from individuals we have met, or who known to be interested in the EU foreign policy, but from all angles: EU and member state officials, ENP partner state officials, and academics, think tank and civil society representatives and journalists in both the EU and the wider Europe, with also many interested individuals in Russia and the United States. We will present the results grouped in these categories, and will be particularly interested to see whether perceptions in the EU and partner states are convergent or not, and whether opinions differ as regards the ENP operations in Eastern Europe versus the South Mediterranean.
As background to the questionnaire we reproduce how the Commission in its official website summarises the form and objectives of the EU’s policy:
The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was developed in 2004, with the objective of avoiding the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and our neighbours and instead strengthening the prosperity, stability and security of all.
`This ENP framework is proposed to the 16 of EU’s closest neighbours – Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine.
‘The ENP, which is chiefly a bilateral policy between the EU and each partner country, is further enriched with regional and multilateral co-operation initiatives:
the Eastern Partnership (launched in Prague in May 2009),
the Union for the Mediterranean (the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, formerly known as the Barcelona Process, re-launched in Paris in July 2008),
and the Black Sea Synergy (launched in Kiev in February 2008).
‘Within the ENP the EU offers our neighbours a privileged relationship, building upon a mutual commitment to common values (democracy and human rights, rule of law, good governance, market economy principles and sustainable development). The ENP goes beyond existing relationships to offer political association and deeper economic integration, increased mobility and more people-to-people contacts. The level of ambition of the relationship depends on the extent to which these values are shared’.
Following this we suggest you view the ENP and Eastern Partnership on the one hand, and the ENP, Barcelona Process and Union for the Mediterranean on the other hand as single blocks of policy. Practitioners will be aware of the formal distinctions between these elements, as the Eastern Partnership and Union for the Mediterranean were introduced on top of, rather than replacing the ENP. And the Barcelona Process preceded the ENP. However we are seeking to evaluate the EU’s overall policy towards these close neighbouring regions. We might in a second questionnaire invite opinions on these different components.
Click here to access the questionnaire.
We hope very much to receive your views and will report back with the results and on plans on how to carry this forward.
Michael EMERSON, CEPS Senior Research Fellow
№9(47), 2010