Normative power meets geopolitics: EU and the implosion of its neighborhoods

The post 1989 era is over yet the tectonic plates are still moving. The enlargement of the EU was a successful attempt to extend democratization and stability , but can it be replicated in its neighborhoods? While the EU was approaching the problem as a "normative power" (trade plus shared norms) it was confronted with the simultaneous implosion of both neighborhoods: East (Ukraine and the Russian question) and South: Post Arab Spring state collapse and war. The EU discovers the geopolitical limits of democratization and of its neighborhood policy (ENP).

The European project was built on the idea of containing power and the repudiation of geopolitics associated with Europe's self destruction. Confronted  with the limits of its soft power today can it (should it?) reinvent itself to face the challenges of its neighborhoods and the power politics of XXIst century?