New Impetus for the European Neighbourhood Policy?

After assessing the prospects for EU expansion last month, Jean-François Drevet devotes his March column to the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), that other instrument the Union possesses for organizing its relations with the surrounding countries. After presenting the protagonists of the ENP (chiefly the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and those of the Mediterranean East and South), he shows what this ENP consists in; the geopolitical contradictions it presents for some member states; the way it is used by the Union and by the “neighbours”; and its specific role in the run-up to the accession of prospective new members. Jean-François Drevet also touches on the question of the Union’s “wider neighbourhood”, which covers such outlying regions as the French overseas territories and other groups of islands linked administratively or historically to the member states. He stresses, in this connection, that cooperation with countries in the neighbourhood of these territories and partnerships established with them may have extremely positive consequences.