Is the ENP promoting regionalism of interest to the neighbours of the Union?

It has been argued that one of ‘EU’s main foreign policy objectives is to establish itself as a global actor and promote a world order where regions gain increasing legitimacy as actors in international affairs’. In other words, according to such view, fostering region-building and promoting inter-regionalism are really crucial ingredients of the EU’s foreign policy. The scope of the proposed paper is exactly to problematise such view by focusing on whether the policy frame of the European Neighbourhood Policy does indeed foster region-building beyond the EU borders. The thesis of the paper is that, firstly, the chiefly bilateral character of the ENP at least questions the region-building dimension of this policy. Secondly, the ENP multilateral dimension consisting mainly by the overlapping policy frames of EuroMed, Union for the Mediterranean, Black Sea Synergy and the Eastern Partnership could be better understood in sub-regionalist rather than inter-regional terms. To achieve its scope, the paper discusses the term ‘region’; questions whether the ‘European neighbourhood’ could be understood as a region implying geographical proximity and continguity and a certain degree of interdependence; and finally analyses the different ENP instruments and methodologies for region-building. In the last part, the paper shows that the ENP multilateral dimension could be better understood in sub-regionalist (marked by dependence of countries on the fringe of Europe on the EU) rather than inter-regional (an interaction between supposedly diplomatic equals) terms.