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Combining the literature on sovereignty and Europeanisation, this article investigates the engagement and impact of the European Union (EU) on contested states (states lacking recognition) through a comparative study of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and Palestine. We find that characteristics of contested statehood mediate EU engagement and impact: the lack of international recognition limits EU’s engagement but encourages development promotion, international integration and assistance of local civil society. Lack of territorial control limits engagement, but ineffective government offers opportunities for development promotion and state-building. As such, and in addition to offering a rich empirical account of two prominent contested states, the article contributes to the discussion of international engagement by developing an innovative conceptual framework for understanding EU’s impact on contested states—a topic neglected within a literature dominated by conventional statehood or conflict resolution themes but very important given extensive international engagement in contested states—and related conflicts.

This article investigates the impact of the European Union (EU) on the Turkish-Cypriot civil society, pegged to the Europeanization debate. The article contributes to the discussion on Europeanization and the role of the EU in contested states, which remains a neglected topic in the literature. The argument advanced is that a series of factors that relate to the contested statehood of the Turkish-Cypriot case mediate the occurrence of Europeanization and they often contribute to an exceptional EU impact on domestic civil society. In this regard, the Turkish-Cypriot example has strong comparative value for the study of the international role of the EU, the Europeanization of contested states and the importance that the EU places on contacts with civil society, as an alternative avenue to relations with states.* The author would like to thank the IKY State Scholarship Foundation and the University of Manchester for supporting this research; various interviewees for their co-operation; the anonymous reviewers and Professor Dimitris Papadimitriou for their useful comments and the LSE Hellenic Observatory for providing a supportive environment to finalize this research. Disclaimer: This work does not wish to engage in the debate over the legality of the self-declared 'TRNC' -any references in the text should not be interpreted as statements on the legality of the Turkish-Cypriot administration.

This article explores the role of the EU in unrecognised, also known as contested, states and more specifically, how their level of international recognition and empirical statehood (i.e. government authority and control) influence the EU's engagement. By studying the case of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the article finds that the EU engagement takes the form of 'state avoidance', mostly characterised by an effort to engage without endorsing state recognition and manifested via a) sui generis management of unrecognised borders, b) informal engagement with officials of the unrecognised state, c) replacement of public authorities with non-state actors and d) extensive engagement with civil society. In this regard, the article offers a range of causal explanations that can be tested across a greater number of similar cases. What is more, I contrast state avoidance to state-building approaches evident in aspiring states with more recognition but greater deficit of empirical statehood, such as Kosovo and Palestine, and I argue for a broader conceptualisation of the phenomenon of unrecognised states, allowing for variation in both the degree of recognition and of empirical statehood. As such, the article combines a discussion of rich empirical findings and inductive concept-building that contributes to a more informed discussion and further research development, especially as far as engagement from the EU is concerned.