Mapping Changing Intra-EU and External Opportunity Structures and Their Impact on Past EU Neighbourhood Policies

Kataryna Wolczuk, Tamar Gamkrelidze, Henna Kakko & Arto Väisänen

This paper provides a comprehensive, detailed and systematic mapping of the changing intra-EU and wider neighbourhood-related opportunity structures resulting from the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

Therefore, in this paper, we explore the shifting internal and external opportunity structures by following the evolution of the ENP over time. We focus first on intra-EU opportunity structures by tracking the ENP’s original design, as well as the underpinning legal and institutional architecture, followed by an analysis of its ‘toolbox’. Then we explore key intra-EU constraints: first, ’mission creep’ from enlargement, which resulted in a rather technocratic, de-securitised design of the ENP and its overall separation from the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP); and second, lack of consensus amongst the Member States on the ENP in general and the EU’s role in the security dimension in particular.

After mapping the intra-EU constraints, the paper explores the external opportunity structures by looking at the regional dimensions, which were specifically developed for the Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods.  We argue that the complex and shifting regional dynamics expose the inherent limits of the undifferentiated, uniform institutional design of the neighbourhood policy.

These led to the subsequent unravelling of the common approach and growing differentiation between the priorities and instruments, not only towards the Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods, but also with regard to individual countries. To illustrate how the shifting opportunity structures impacted the implementation of the ENP, the paper focusses on the receptivity of neighbouring countries and their relations with the EU using two case studies: Georgia and Morocco.