Geostrategies of the European Neighbourhood Policy

Abstract

The debate about the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has, in essence, been about borders and bordering. Such departures could contribute — and often do so — to a rather fixed geopolitical vision of what the EU is about and how it aims to run and to organize the broader European space. However, this article aims to retain space for viewing the ENP as a developmental and somewhat fluid process. A conceptual framework, based on outlining three geopolitical models and a series of different geopolitical strategies employed by the EU in regard to its borders, is hence employed in order to be able to tell a more dynamic story regarding the developing nature of the ENP and the EU's evolving nature more generally. The complexity traced informs us that various geostrategies may be held at the same time at the external border. Moreover, the dominance of one geostrategy may be replaced by another or a different combination of them with regard to the same neighbourhood. It is, more generally, argued that if anything it is precisely this dynamism that should be championed as a valuable resource, avoiding the tendency to close off options through the reification of particular visions of the nature of the EU and its borders.

Borders and Border Dimensions in Europe. Between Frontierisation and Boundarisation

“…The third one is a network of relations between multiple centres of overlapping influences on both sides of the border. It would seem that the organisation of the external borders of the EU is dominated by the Westphalian and imperial models [2].…”

Bordering and Ordering the European Neighbourhood: A Critical Perspective on Eu Territoriality and Geopolitics

“…Geopolitics understood in this manner is a constant process of reflecting group interests and identities against those of other groups in the world and through this reflection deriving principles for strategic action. Taking these socio-spatial perspectives a bit further, geopolitics can be understood as a multilevel process of boundary-making or 'bordering' (Browning and Joeniemmi 2008). Bordering is basically about the everyday construction of borders through ideology, discourses, political institutions, attitudes and agency (Scott and Matzeit 2006).…”

North Africa and the Making of Europe : Governance, Institutions and Culture

“…describes the EU as a neomedieval Empire, characterised by its fuzzy borders and networked governance model, but also by its cultivation of peripheral borderlands into which the empire gradually extends. It is 231 engaged in the construction of a 'ring of friends' around its centre, which creates marches or fluid buffer zones along the frontier of its empire (Browning and Joenniemi, 2008;. Subsequently, the ENP might be seen as an attempt to transform the external EU borders from areas of demarcation and division to areas of exchange and interaction (Comelli et al, 2007), while the general approach to the regions adjacent to Europe can be described as creating interconnected 'borderlands' that serve as buffer zones to the EU (Del Sarto, 2009).…”