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This paper examines how the European Union (EU) has discursively framed the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) since 2003 and explores frames and frame alignment over time. The study argues that the EU embeds the ENP with relatively fixed frame-issues and unstable framings that get aligned when the Union feels urged to respond to external/internal dynamics and deepen engagement with partner countries’ political elites to tackle external challenges/threats. The study argues that the EU has consistently utilized the security frame as the main pillar in crafting the ENP discourse. Even though the ENP incorporates a variety of priority spheres – policy frame areas – for cooperation between the EU and the ‘neighbours’ within the ENP, security frame issues top the EU-led priority list in the neighborhood. Accordingly, the study argues that the neighbors and the neighborhood are conceived in terms of security. Furthermore, it claims that the EU-led frames are interlinked with each other mainly through the security frame. Security policy-frame infiltrates majority of the ENP-driven policy issues, which explains its elevated frequency across the ENP documents. To explain the process the research introduces the concept of frame alignment to explain the changes in EU-driven framings, linking discursive instability with internal and external environmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's decision to grant Ukraine and Moldova a candidate country status and the recognition of Georgia's European perspective in June 2022 has significant effects for both the EU's enlargement and security and defence policies. So far, 'hard' security issues have played little role in the framing of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Association Agreements (AAs) with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Their full integration into EU security and defence arrangements will thus require considerable strategy-making and implementation efforts. This article discusses the extent to which existing external Differentiated Integration (DI) constellations can be seen as 'building blocks' for Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia's prospective full integration into the EU's security and defence architecture. It is shown that, in legal and practical terms, such DI constellations are conducive to the deepening of these countries' integration with the EU in the security and defence domain. From the political viewpoint, the focus on DI with the new accession countries may, however, be (mis)used as a substitute for fullscale integration into the EU security and defence architecture. We, nonetheless, suggest several pilot domains that can be used to test the limits of new accession countries' DI with the Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU's external promotion of norms and the idea of normative power Europe itself are increasingly contested, which is especially true in the EU's southern neighbourhood. However, whereas scholars of EU foreign policy acknowledge the contestation of external norms, they find it difficult to understand why other normative frameworks could be equally or more appealing to Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, as they entail norms that are less prominent in the Western catalogue of liberal values. To facilitate the detection and analysis of a wider set of norms, we situate them along several continua of norm orientations and apply this framework to the EU's southern neighbourhood. EU foreign policy scholars can then examine whether different norms overlap or compete or are complementary or even incompatible, and the extent to which values promoted by European actors are congruent with normative frameworks in the MENA region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2004, scholars have extensively analysed whether the EU's external governance strategy is effective. In this paper, we propose a change in perspective and argue that domestic policy change in third countries is not merely a possible outcome of the EU-third state cooperation, but also a condition for the design of cooperation between the EU and third states in the first place. ENP states with a track record of domestic policy reforms are more likely to agree on a comprehensive reform agenda with the EU than states with no prior domestic reform activities. This implies that third states are 'pulling the strings', since their willingness and capacity for reform is the crucial determinant of close cooperation with the EU. We probe our argument in the field of asylum policy across all 16 ENP states and proceed with a within-case analysis of asylum policy reform in Moldova. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines and compares the Russian and Western research agendas on the European Union (EU)–Russia policies in their shared neighbourhood. The analysis will be implemented in four successive steps. (1) The conceptualisation of the EU–Russia common neighbourhood in the Western and Russian researches will be analysed in three dimensions (terminology attributed to this region, political–social transformations, regionalism) that will contextualise the subsequent analysis of the Western and Russian research agendas on (2) EU policies (European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership) and (3) Russia's policies (including the issues of the Eurasian integration) towards the common neighbourhood and also on (4) EU–Russia interactions within this area. The conclusions will identify and systemise the major trends as well as nuances in each agenda and also the differences and asymmetries between the Western and Russian research agendas will be outlined and analysed. These differences are determined by both, the policy-oriented and academic factors. The agendas are asymmetric, yet they are not monolithic, pluralism exists in both of them. Prospects for the further research will be outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was launched in 2003 and implemented in 2004 by the European Union (EU) to create an area of prosperity, stability, security and economic cooperation with neighboring countries, with the objective of avoiding the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and its neighbors. Indeed, this policy has been implemented immediately after 2004 enlargement to avoid the emergence of "new dividing lines" with neighbouring countries. It supposes the application of the same approach applied for countries applying for membership become then member of the EU to prepare the countries of the Eastern region to an eventual membership. This approach confirms the orientation of this policy for the Eastern neighborhood. It has been more active in this region than in the southern Mediterranean region, mainly due to the presence of a geostrategic concurrency with Russia.

Copyright of Journal of Public Law / Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht is the property of Verlag Oesterreich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU's PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA-democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA's (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU's approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU's PAR design to its democratic implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista UNISCI is the property of Unidad de Investigaciones Sobre Seguridad y Cooperacion International (UNISCI) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent political developments in Ukraine call into question its democratisation process. For this reason, it is important to consider EU relations with that country as offering a possible protection against full democratic inversion. Two problems are considered: the continuity of EU policy towards Kyiv; and, the scope for EU influence in furthering democratic standards. In the light of patterns since the Orange Revolution in 2004, the political outlook for EU/Ukraine relations appears unpromising.

Through the use of political conditionality, the European Union (EU) exercises what Ian Manners has termed ‘normative power’, which many scholars and political analysts have regarded as the primary force behind the speedy democratization process of the 2004 enlargement of the EU. The two most recent enlargements of the EU have extended the Union into a new neighbourhood bordering still relatively democratically infant and unstable states such as Belarus and Ukraine. Following the relative success of conditionality during the enlargement process, the ENP was developed in 2003 to once again take advantage of conditionality to spread EU ‘norms’ and secure political stability at its borders, this time without the incentive of membership. This article analyzes the ability of the EU to exercise normative power in Eastern Europe. It presents the argument that despite systematic attempts to spread EU policies, or so-called ‘norms’ beyond the Union’s external borders, disparities in norm-adoption among ENP target-states exemplifies incongruence in the success of the EU’s normative power in foreign relations. To address the question of whether the EU demonstrates normative power through its application of the Neighbourhood Policy, the authors’ analysis will address the cases of Ukraine and Belarus.

Copyright of Bucharest University Annals - Law Series is the property of CH Beck Publishing House and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was launched in 2003 and implemented in 2004 by the European Union (EU) to create an area of prosperity, stability, security and economic cooperation with neighboring countries, with the objective of avoiding the emergence of new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and its neighbors. Indeed, this policy has been implemented immediately after 2004 enlargement to avoid the emergence of "new dividing lines" with neighbouring countries. It supposes the application of the same approach applied for countries applying for membership become then member of the EU to prepare the countries of the Eastern region to an eventual membership. This approach confirms the orientation of this policy for the Eastern neighborhood. It has been more active in this region than in the southern Mediterranean region, mainly due to the presence of a geostrategic concurrency with Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the legalisation of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union (EU) and its increasing use of sanctions. It argues that the breadth and depth of the numerous sanctions regimes in place shows that EU foreign policy is not merely an aspiration but produces law and legal processes which share similarities with those in the rest of the EU’s legal order. Further, the article examines the extent to which non-EU Member States in Europe have aligned themselves with EU sanctions. The argument is made that this is evidence not only of Europeanisation, but also crucially of a legalised foreign policy which has allowed Europe-wide, EU-led foreign policy to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World is the property of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The empirical literature has focused on political, socio-economic and even religious indicators when attempting to understand the rise of Islamic factions in Egypt, thereby minimizing the role of cultural aspects in driving mobilization and contestation processes in the Arab World. With this issue in mind, this paper focuses on the alteration of cultural perception of the public through the capitalization of perceptual biases. The contribution of European Union policies in the region has served as useful material for the Islamic rhetoric of the ‘Salafi Call’ and the Muslim Brotherhood in creating a European Union-sceptical culture to contest and mobilize for the elections in 2012 in Egypt. Based on the sixth edition of Jerald Greenberg and Robert Baron'sBehavior in Organizations(London, 1997), perceptual biases of stereotyping, which may distort the image of the target collective, and comparative examples of Islamic rhetoric from the period covering the Egyptian elections will be analyzed to demonstrate how Islamic factions took advantage of these perceptual biases to disparage the ‘West’ in the region and, at the same time, to gain more sympathy, support and legitimacy from the Egyptian people. Whilst there is a significant knowledge gap about Europe in the Arab world, clouded by generalization and stereotyping, the European Union likewise lacks accurate and up-to-date information about religious movements. Religious elites constitute a significant player in altering cultural perception in the Arab region. Pragmatism of politically active religious factions increases their impact on perception of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The European Union contracted Morocco to regulate migration from so-called "transit migrants" from Morocco to Europe via the European Neighbourhood Policy. Yet, international organisations signal that human, asylum and refugee rights are not upheld in Morocco and that many sub-Saharan migrants suffer from ill-health and violence. Hence, our study aimed at 1) investigating the nature of violence that sub-Saharan migrants experience around and in Morocco, 2) assessing which determinants they perceive as decisive and 3) formulating prevention recommendations. Methods Applying Community-Based Participatory Research, we trained twelve sub-Saharan migrants as Community Researchers to conduct in-depth interviews with peers, using Respondent Driven Sampling. We used Nvivo 8 to analyse the data. We interpreted results with Community Researchers and the Community Advisory Board and commonly formulated prevention recommendations. Results Among the 154 (60 F-94 M) sub-Saharan migrants interviewed, 90% reported cases of multiple victimizations, 45% of which was sexual, predominantly gang rape. Seventy-nine respondents were personally victimized, 41 were forced to witness how relatives or comigrants were victimized and 18 others knew of peer victimisation. Severe long lasting illhealth consequences were reported while sub-Saharan victims are not granted access to the official health care system. Perpetrators were mostly Moroccan or Algerian officials and sub- Saharan gang leaders who function as unofficial yet rigorous migration professionals at migration 'hubs'. They seem to proceed in impunity. Respondents link risk factors mainly to their undocumented and unprotected status and suggest that migrant communities set-up awareness raising campaigns on risks while legal and policy changes enforcing human rights, legal protection and human treatment of migrants along with severe punishment of perpetrators are politically lobbied for. Conclusion Sub-Saharan migrants are at high risk of sexual victimization and subsequent ill-health in and around Morocco. Comprehensive cross-border and multi-level prevention actions are urgently called for. Given the European Neighbourhood Policy, we deem it paramount that the European Union politically cares for these migrants' lives and health, takes up its responsibility, drastically changes migration regulation into one that upholds human rights beyond survival and enforces all authorities involved to restore migrants' lives worthy to be lived again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecotourism has become a driver for cooperation across the EU’s Eastern borders. This holds true even in the case of such reluctant a partner as Belarus. In studying the resumption of navigation on the Augustów canal – a 180 year old waterway connecting the Vistula and Neman river basins across the Polish-Belarusian border – this paper illustrates how in “alienated” borderlands projects that develop alternative forms of tourism can foster cross-border cooperation. Shared concern for the preservation of the borderland’s natural and cultural heritage enabled a “bridging” of neighbourhood relations and bred trans-boundary region-building initiatives (Euroregion Neman). A multi-scalar screening of how the Augustów canal area is being promoted as a tourism attraction in Belarus reveals the emergence of horizontal cooperation across the border. Despite geopolitical obstacles, this network governance model empowers the local stakeholders and actors of the embryonic Belarusian civil society, thus favouring their gradual socialisation in Europe.

This paper engages the instabilities of the category of 'asylum' looking at Arab Uprisings' mobility to Italy and highlighting the contested encounter between governmental practices in managing asylum seekers and the embodied experiences of mobility from Libya and Tunisia to Italy in 2011-12. Focusing on asylum application processing, our analysis tackles its sorting rationalities (asylum seekers versus irregular migrants, country of birth versus country of refuge), its produced spatialities (processing centers and 'humanitarian emergency zones'), and its moral predicaments (how vulnerability and protection are put to work). Our aim is to contribute to a political epistemology of asylum whereby asylum's normative instabilities are mobilized to trouble its exclusionary boundaries and the profiling of the refugee as the alter ego figure of the citizen. The paper revolves around four episodes: it opens attending to an epistemological challenge; it stages a critical engagement with the Italian 'North Africa Emergency' in the second and third section; finally, it puts this analysis to work on the terrain of a political struggle to demand a right to presence for Libyan war evacuees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this paper searches for insights concerning Eastern Europe as a region in the making in a global context. New systems of governance and new economic set-ups, which challenge current powers, are emerging uninterruptedly coined by various global dynamics. The evolving divergences, choices and dynamics of governments on a global scale generate new players, coalitions and ways of engagement into multifaceted actions, which are in urgent need of study. The discrepancies on the line lead to geopolitical struggle, security threats, and political turmoil and water and food shortages. The world is going through a multiple crisis of finance, investment/growth and ecosystem. These channels seem to be unrelated, but are interconnected with each other in various ways. They reflect large structural discrepancies between different regional unions and local alliances; between actors on local and national levels; between the developed world and nations that are less developed; between finance and the real economy; and between the earth's ecological units, on one side and economic systems and political decisions on the other side. Author argues that Eastern and Central Europe`s situation in the globalising world today is somehow still an open end option position as it is not clear which eastern alliance will lead within the EU as alternative to a powerful Franco-German coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to compare transformative power of European Union (EU) through its enlargement policy and European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Their goals, instruments and influences on a candidate country (Turkey) and an eastern neighbour of the EU (Ukraine) are compared. Because of the membership perspective, Europeanization through the accession process is much more influential than Europeanization of neighbourhood of EU through ENP. There has been interplay of domestic and external factors which have influenced transformative power of EU on Turkey and Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the democratisation process of Ukraine. As part of its democratisation process, it is said to be important to know the impact this process will have in the European Union and how it will secure its protection against the process. The process poses two problems whether the EU policy to Kyiv will still be pursued and the influence of the EU in the execution of democracy. Since the Oranges Revolution, the political development reportedly remained stagnant.

This article seeks to explain the relationship between the European Union (EU) and one of its Middle Eastern neighbors: Lebanon. By conducting an in-depth empirical single case study and engaging in competitive theory testing, this article shows that the EU in Lebanon behaves at the same time as a normative and a realist power. This article challenges both the scholarship on the EU that sees the EU as a normative power as well as scholarship that focuses on structural neorealism to explain the EU's role in its neighborhood. This article adopts an approach that is different from the mainstream approaches in two ways. First, it focuses on the entire set of policies that the EU has implemented or not in Lebanon. Second, it provides an in-depth case study centered on the interaction between the EU and Lebanon, while also looking at the regional dynamics and at the domestic tensions within Lebanon. By doing so, it shows that the EU is a 'realist-normative' power in the specific case of Lebanon. Thus, these two frameworks are a false dichotomy and the argument shall be tested on other cases to make it generalizable. This suggests that the constructivist-realist divide coexists in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the Western Newly Independent States (WNIS) of Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine a 'European choice' (defined as the aspiration to join Euro-Atlantic structures) remains an ambiguous opportunity. NATO enlargement is now firmly off the agenda, leaving the future status of the WNIS mainly dependent on engagement with the EU. Critics of the EU's 'eastern' policy - often referred to as 'enlargement lite' - contend that it risks leaving the WNIS on the fringes of the European mainstream with their fate dependent upon whether negative or positive determinants of EU integration ultimately prevail. Meanwhile, the WNIS constitute an 'in between' sub-region of post-enlargement Europe that can be construed as part of the outer layer of Europe's regional international society or, alternatively, at the intersection of two overlapping regional international societies. EU international society on the one side and on the other a conjectural 'Eurasian' regional international society premised on influences of the Soviet legacy and the lure of deeper integration with Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the ability of the European Union (EU) to exercise normative power in the foreign policy of Eastern Europe. It raises the argument over the incongruent success of the normative power of the EU in foreign relations exemplified by the disparities in norm-adoption among European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) target-states despite attempts to spread EU policies or norms beyond the EU's external borders. It also addresses the cases of Ukraine and Belarus to see whether the EU demonstrates normative power through its application of the ENP.