The Foreign Policy of the European Union: An Anchor of (In)Stability in the Neighborhood?

The end of the Cold War brought about momentous changes in the EU, prompting the development of its foreign policy. Through the 1995 and 2004-2007 enlargements, the EU continued its mission of building a Europe “whole and free,” but it has also acknowledged that this mission remains incomplete without a sound policy for its new neighborhood. Based on theories of social constructivism (see Wendt 1992; 1995; Fearon and Wendt 2002), discourse analysis (Miliken 1999) and policy analysis, this paper will analyze official documents and speeches of European officials in relations to the EU’s neighborhood in the aftermath of the 2005-2007 enlargement, as well as the actual policies implemented towards the eastern and southern neighborhooods. The aim is to assess the effectiveness of the EU’s engagement with the neighborhood.  In particular, the paper aims to assess whether the post-Lisbon Treaty European foreign policy qualifies the Union as soft power (Nye 2005), smart power (Cross 2011; Leonard 2005; McCormick 2006; Laïdi 2008; Hill 2010; Moravcsik 2010), normative power (Manners 2002), civilian power (Duchêne 1972) or even metrosexual power (Khanna 2004).

The current paper draws on the findings of two multi-year international programs which resulted in the publication of two co-edited books by the two authors, The Foreign Policy of the European Union: Assessing Europe’s Role in the World and The Frontiers of Europe: A Transatlantic Problem?, both published by the Brookings Institution Press in Washington, DC in 2012 and 2011, respectively.