Less Regional Conflicts, More Regional Integration

New Future for the Western Balkan Countries

By Daffi Prokopova

The countries of the Western Balkan region - Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are on their way to the European Union. They are on different stage in their accession negotiations, but they are seen together. The regional integration of the Western Balkan countries help them create common future in order to be preserved more war conflicts, to be supported the economic reconstruction and a favourable investment climate to be formed so as to benefit the region nations.

Iced conflicts

In the former Macedonian PM Lubcho Georgievski’s view a new international conference dedicated to the SEE problems should be initiated and the Kosovo future settlement should be solved there. “If Kosovo is divided into part this may provoke some kind of instability in Macedonia as well regarding the gradually increasing number of the Albanians in Macedonia,” he added.

The multiethnic and multicultural model of development is not the most suitable decision for development of the Western Balkans. Mr. Georgievski fears proved this statement. According to him the state borders of the countries in the Western Balkan region should be formed in accordance with the ethnic principles of the nations. He claimed there exist 2 Macedonian, 2 Croatian and 2 Serbian states in the Western Balkans as well as the Albanian nation has been spread in the boundaries of all the surrounding Albania countries. With the increasing steps of Albanisation of Macedonia, moreover, some months ago Skopje was advised to proclaim Albanian language as a second official language. Also some Macedonian officials justifiably fear of lacking of the Macedonian statehood.

Regarding the territorial integrity the case of Republika Srpska in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is something similar. The RS leaders eyes at Serbia and prevents the development of BiH as a whole country. The most visible sign are the police reform debates as well as the huge amount of Serbian investments in RS only. After ‘loosing’ Montenegro Belgrade is trying to cause instability in its neighbouring country by attracting gradually Serb populated RS.

EU’s approach to the Western Balkans

EU sees possible SE Europe instability as a threat to its own security and prosperity. For this reason EU offers the Western Balkans a common format for regional cooperation in order to be integrated in the EU. The prospects for EU membership of those countries can partly preserve the ethnic based conflicts.The aspirations of these nations combined with the pressure for institutional and economic reforms put aside problems of national identity and ideas for Great Serbia, Great Albania or so. Slovenia and Croatia are example for successful integration efforts. Croatia’s statesmen do not strive for separation of Bosnia, nor did they in the past. They concentrated their efforts on the improvement of the economic conditions of the Croatians, on attracting foreign investments, on complying Croatia’s legislation with the EU norms and thus creating favourable conditions and secured investment climate for boosting the economy. That’s the true way. Macedonia is getting on this way. The reasonable fears for ethnic tension are fears for getting back. The newest country –Montenegro - is making successful efforts to the EU as well in contract to its former union member Serbia.

Regional Integration

The Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) present the legal form for regional integration of the Western Balkan countries in the EU. It sets clear conditions for cooperation and mutual assistance among the countries in the region in order to be successfully integrated into the EU. The EU has invested a tremendous amount in the stabilisation and development of the Western Balkans. Since 1991, through its various programmes, the Union has provided more than EUR 7 bn in assistance to the 5 countries of the region. In the year 2000, a six-year programme of EUR 4.65 bn was agreed also. Since 2000 assistance to the region has been delivered, helping to transform the lives of people in SE Europe and improve the security of the continent of Europe as a whole. The results of this assistance can be seen in the progress already made in the region towards greater political stability, democracy and economic recovery.

Less Regional Conflicts, More Regional Integration

The Western Balkan counties agreed that "rapprochement with the EU will go hand in hand with this process of developing regional cooperation. This statement shows the determination of the Western Balkan countries to put their common efforts to build a peaceful future and to co-operate together in order to achieve inviolability of borders, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the countries of the region as well as economic reconstruction and prosperity.

EU Crisis Management in the Western Balkans

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the countries of the former Yugoslavia have experienced a series of violent conflicts leading to the break-up of a country that had been praised as a model for the management of ethnic diversity. On top of that, the self-determination claims that were at the heart of the conflicts in the 1990s continue to strain relations between ethnic groups within and beyond the region. Kosovo may be the most obvious case at the moment, but there are latent tensions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Southern Serbia, Sandjak, Vojvodina, and Montenegro, and it is unclear what impact the resolution of Kosovo’s final status will have on them.

Against this complex background the European Union, and its predecessor the European Community, sought to assert its emerging political and economic power in the management and resolution of the region’s various overlapping conflicts. But despite attempts from the early 1990s onwards to broker a settlement that would have prevented the violence that ensued in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, much of the Union’s engagement with the region during the last decade of the twentieth century was anything but a success. The policy of conditional recognition of new states was unable to influence actions on the ground, while various EU-sponsored and co-sponsored peace deals for Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as the Lisbon Plan (1992), the Vance-Owen Plan (1992-1993), and the 'principles for future constitutional arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina' (1993-1994), floundered. It was only after the Dayton Accords of 1995, and even more so after the NATO intervention over Kosovo in 1999 that the EU began to play an increasingly important and successful role as regional peace maker and mediator of conflicts in the Western Balkans. No matter which perspective one takes on the Union’s crisis management policy, it remains the largest donor (with over €6 billion spent in the region since 1992) and the organisation with the biggest presence throughout this region. The stabilization thus achieved over the past years, partly in cooperation with third parties, is no least a result of the EU’s ability and willingness to offer credible prospects of association and eventually membership to all countries of the region.

Current EU capabilities appear to be sufficient to take on tasks of the kind required in the Western Balkans–limited peace-keeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, and police support and training missions in these two countries. In addition, the EU has a significant military and police presence in the region and is a major player in the Kosovo final status negotiations under the auspices of the UN. The EU has been able to mobilize the personnel, hardware and funds needed to sustain these various missions. It has put in place the institutional framework and instruments required to make the necessary decisions and proved itself capable of cooperation and coordination within its own structures as well as with third parties. It is equally important in this context to bear in mind that since the failure of crisis management in the early and mid-1990s, the Union’s capabilities have improved significantly, enabling it now to undertake both civilian and military operations. In contrast to the early 1990s, the EU is now much better able to back up its diplomatic efforts with credible threats of force where necessary.

This relatively positive assessment of EU crisis management capabilities in the Western Balkans after 1999, however, must not be taken as a general indication of the readiness of the Union to manage crises elsewhere with similar degrees of success. While it is undoubtedly true that the Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy has improved in its coherence, this does not necessarily translate into significant increases in effectiveness. In Macedonia, for example, it could be argued that early-stage crisis management, despite the mobilization of significant resources, failed, and that it was only after violent conflict had erupted that crisis management succeeded in brokering a deal–and even then only with the backing of NATO, precisely because the EU’s military capabilities at that time were not yet operational and it had to rely on NATO for credible back-up. Likewise, the EU’s more recent relative successes in the Western Balkans do not reflect only improved crisis management capabilities. The EU’s policy conditionalities are much more effective vis-à-vis countries for which the promise of closer association with, and potentially accession to, the EU is credible, and where political elites and publics are ready to make compromises in order to facilitate accession.

In other words, the success of EU crisis management in the Western Balkans must be seen in a broader context, in which crisis management is only one element in a comprehensive approach to a region. Without a clear long-term commitment of the EU to the Western Balkans, the incentives for cooperation by political elites and the various ethnic groups they represent would be less powerful. Without this commitment the Union’s ability to elicit short- and long-term compliance with its goals, which has been a major factor in the success of its crisis management operations so far, would be seriously diminished.

The commitments to build effective crisis management capabilities made by EU member states on paper have not yet been tested to the full. The two police missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia are operating with only about 10 percent of the total number of police officers committed by EU member states, and the two military operations in these two countries similarly are operating with only around 12 percent of the total troops promised. At the same time, the EU is now, for better or worse, locked into a framework of cooperation with NATO which will perpetuate its dependency on NATO resources. This may significantly reduce the Union’s capabilities for autonomous action in situations where NATO resources are stretched, or where disagreement within NATO prevents the use of certain resources by the EU.

A final factor limiting the generalizability of the relative success of recent EU crisis management operations in the Western Balkans is at the same time one of the very reasons for the EU’s success there–familiarity with, and sensitivity towards, the situation in the region and the countries concerned, long-standing networks of information sources, and previous experience in dealing with the political elites and populations in the area.

Nevertheless, even the limited crisis management operations that the EU is currently conducting in the Western Balkans are very valuable for the Union’s future role as a serious international actor. While it might be too early to proclaim the overall success of EU conflict management in the region of the former Yugoslavia, there are some indicators suggesting that success might not elude the Union on this occasion. First of all, institutional reforms within the Union (such as the revisions to the Common European Security and Defence Policy by the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, the agreement, and gradual implementation of the Helsinki Headline Catalogue, the establishment of a rapid reaction funding mechanism, and institutionalized cooperation with NATO on sharing assets and information) have furthered the development of credible crisis management policies and instruments. Second, the EU’s overall approach to the conduct of international affairs–combining multilateralism (both within and outside the EU), capacities for short-term crisis management with long-term structural conflict prevention, and appropriate balance between civilian and military strategies–has been shown to be effective. Third, by highlighting the remaining deficiencies in EU crisis management capabilities, the Union’s experiences in the Western Balkans offer lessons for the future that should be considered before engaging in more ambitious and demanding operations elsewhere in the world.

Yet, there are also some important global lessons to be drawn from the EU's crisis management experience in the Western Balkans. First among them is the necessary recognition that crisis management without credible military back-up is likely to fail in the face of adversaries on the ground determined to realize their maximum goals by military means. Second, and equally importantly, coercive diplomacy, and military intervention, alone are unable to offer long-term peace and stability. What is needed additionally is a strategy for post-conflict reconstruction and peace building that, while it may still rely on military enforcement mechanisms, also provides incentives to erstwhile adversaries to engage constructively with one another and with the international community. A third lesson extends to the need for multilateral cooperation. The resources, skills, and knowledge that the international community collectively brings to the table are invaluable for successful crisis management and conflict resolution. Influence on local actors, knowledge of particularities of specific conflicts, and intelligence on the intentions of various factions are as important as the military hardware and diplomatic personnel necessary to succeed in crisis management and conflict resolution.

The microcosm of the Western Balkans thus can be seen almost as a laboratory of crisis management and conflict resolution. The policies developed and employed here since the 1990s may not be directly transferable to other conflict-ridden regions such as the Caucasus, the Great Lakes Region, the Horn of Africa or the Middle East, but they offer valuable lessons from failures and successes that the crisis managers of the future will ignore at their peril.

Conflict and Development

Many of the countries of the Western Balkans and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during the past 15 years have had to respond to challenges of ‘transition’ in two key senses: as loci of great political and economic transformations, and as victims of costly military conflicts. Successfully negotiating the economic and political transitions in this region has proven difficult enough, even in countries not touched by military conflict. When military conflicts are present, the challenges facing policy makers and development practitioners can acquire truly daunting proportions–underscoring the importance of early warning and pre-emption of violent conflicts.

This issue of Development and Transition is devoted to these questions. It begins by reminding us that some potential conflicts in this region have indeed been averted–so far. In a special focus on Crimea, Gwendolyn Sasse argues that a combination of bargaining in national and local politics, backed up by effective development-based interventions by the international community, have forestalled the doomsday scenarios that were frequently predicted for the region in the early 1990s. The unresolved tensions associated with the repatriation of the Crimean Tatars, however, cast a long shadow over prospects for continued stability and development. As Sascha Graumann of UNDP’s Crimean Integration and Development Programme points out, some of these tensions are intensifying, particularly in terms of legal, language, and land reform issues.

It is widely recognized that few countries in Europe have been as blighted by conflict as Serbia. However, successes in crisis prevention and post-conflict recovery in South Serbia are not so well known. In explaining these successes and pointing to some of their broader lessons, Tom Thorogood reminds us that well-targeted, area-based development programming based on consensus among all relevant stakeholders can play a critical role in averting a conflict escalation.

Kosovo is perhaps the region’s most complex challenge for stabilization, as some leading experts pointed out at an LSE forum earlier this year. Within the territory there are immense difficulties with post-conflict recovery, equal rights, security, and development opportunities. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations on Kosovo’s final status, living conditions for Kosovo residents will deteriorate if they are not accompanied by institution-building efforts to improve governance on the ground. The article by Lundrim Aliu reviewing Kosovo’s security sector illustrates the kinds of challenges facing policy makers in Kosovo.

Security sector reform issues go well beyond post-conflict development, as is evident in the analysis by Katrin Kinzelbach and Amrei Müller. UNDP is joining growing numbers of international organizations and NGOs that are helping to make military and security institutions more modern, transparent, and accountable to civilian and parliamentary oversight. In this way, countries in Europe and Central Asia can benefit from experience with security sector reforms that have been undertaken in other parts of the world. UNDP’s Transitional Justice Team suggests that the post-conflict countries of this region–particularly the Western Balkans–can likewise benefit from transitional justice initiatives, in order to reconcile the avoidance of collective guilt with the need for justice and reconciliation.

The European Union is becoming a major actor in conflict prevention and post-conflict recovery. Stefan Wolff observes that this results in part from the EU’s growing prominence in the international development and security architecture, and also reflects the ‘soft power’ of prospective EU accession. The ‘European anchor’ is a key conflict prevention tool for the region–but its application is less feasible outside of Europe where the prospect of eventual EU accession can not help turn swords into ploughshares.

EU Integration and Turkish SME

EU Enlargement and the Wider Neighbourhood


Turkey and the European Union

The European Commission’s October 2005 invitation to begin formal accession negotiations marks a milestone in Turkey’s relationship with the EU. Turkey’s first formal application for membership in the EU (then the European Economic Community) dates back to July 1959, when the EEC offered a roadmap to a customs union, as a prelude to Turkey’s eventual membership. This roadmap was formalized by the 1963 Ankara Agreement and its supplemental protocol of 1970, which led to the establishment of the customs union in 1995. The Customs Union between Turkey and the EU was a unique experience in that Turkey was the first (and the only country until 2002) that entered into such integration without being a member of the Union. Moreover, Turkey’s agreement with the EU goes well beyond the classical definition of a customs union1: Turkey has pledged to harmonize its commercial and competition policies (including intellectual property laws) with those of the EU, as well as extend most of the EU’s trade and competition rules to the Turkish economy.

Like other parts of Turkey’s business community, Turkish SMEs have already spent 10 years working within the framework of the customs union. This experience suggests some of the possible effects on the SME sector that could result from Turkey’s possible accession to, or at least closer integration with, the EU.

Turkish small to medium sized enterprise (SME) export competitiveness and EU integration

SMEs play a critical role in the Turkish economy. According to a recent study, the SME sector accounted in 2000 for 99.8 per cent of total number of enterprises, 77 per cent of total employment, 38 per cent of capital investment, 27 per cent of value added and roughly 10 per cent of exports in Turkey.2 These estimates may understate SMEs’ importance for Turkey’s trade balance: legislation encourages SMEs to conduct export-import operations via specialized foreign trade companies, which are not themselves counted as SMEs.3 With the exception of the financial services and capital-intensive sectors like energy and cement production, SMEs are strongly represented across all sectors. In the 15 years between 1990 and 2005, Turkey’s per-capita exports increased from $230 to $1019, while the ratio of exports to GDP rose from less than 9 per cent to over 20 per cent during this time. These improvements reflect Turkey’s efforts to liberalize its economy (which began in the 1980s) as well as its growing integration with the EU - both of which were promoted by the EU customs union. At present, roughly half of Turkey’s foreign trade is conducted with EU countries.

The supplementary protocol to the 1963 Ankara Agreement foresaw mutual, asymmetric reductions of customs duties on trade in manufactured goods between Turkey and the EEC, so that barriers to Turkish exports on European markets fell faster than barriers to European exports in Turkey. By 1995, the EU had already significantly reduced the protection applied against Turkish imports, so that Turkish exporters had already captured many of the customs union’s market access benefits before the customs union was formally established. Turkey’s exports to the EU therefore did not jump in 1995; instead, the share of EU exports in total exports actually declined. By assuming the EU’s common external tariff regime, Turkey opened its markets not only to EU members, but also to other countries with which the EU had preferential trade agreements.

Significant increases in competitive pressures ensued for Turkish SMEs, most of which at that time were accustomed to competing on price by leveraging on relatively low costs of labour and raw materials and hiding behind trade protectionism. Having lost these protective barriers, Turkish SMEs started to look for new competitive advantages. Turkey’s trade data suggest that this search paid off, particularly after 2000. Average annual export growth nearly tripled to 22 per cent during 2001-2005 from 8 per cent during 1990-2000. While many factors contributed to this increasing export competitiveness, Turkey’s progress towards EU accession was certainly one of the most important.

EU integration and the labour market

Growing competitive pressures led many SMEs to seek to reduce costs by raising productivity.4 For the labour-intensive sectors that dominate the Turkish industry, this created incentives for lay-offs, wage cuts, and unfortunately reverting to such illegal means as not providing workers with social security coverage or deploying child labour. However, Turkey’s EU integration provided natural brakes on this ‘race to the bottom’. Turkey’s textile and clothing industries, for example, rely heavily on such European buyers as H&M and Marks and Spencer, whose rules for their suppliers prohibit the employment of children or unregistered workers. Companies in these sectors therefore began to invest in human capital by establishing vocational training schools to improve the quality of blue-collar labour. They also invested in such skill areas as design and innovation, thereby creating new employment opportunities for more skilled workers. Other SMEs responded to these pressures by moving their plants to Turkey’s less developed regions where labour costs were lower, thereby creating employment opportunities in Turkey’s poorer regions.

Closer integration within the EU could accelerate the brain drain of Turkish specialists, particularly the managers needed to make Turkey’s SMEs more competitive. However, movement of labour between Turkey and the EU is not free now, and the restrictions imposed on the new EU member states following their May 2004 accession suggest that such movement would not be immediately and completely liberalized for Turkey. In the interim, Western Europe’s needs for imported specialists are likely to be at least partly met by the new member states. Hence, by the time the Turkish labour force acquires the right to move freely in the EU, the EU’s demand for skilled labour might be lower than it is today, so brain drain pressures would be weaker as well.

Foreign direct investment in Turkish SMEs

The 10 new EU member states attracted some € 80 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) during 1997-2015. During this time Turkey - with a roughly similar population - was able to attract only some € 7 billion. While at the macro level FDI inflows finance external deficits and contribute to economic growth, the short-term impact on SMEs need not be uniformly positive, especially if it means stronger competition from global giants. Competition for skilled labour intensifies, local consumers become more sophisticated and demanding in the face of increased variety and choice, and so on.

So far, however, the impact of FDI linked to European integration has been largely positive, particularly for the automotive sector. The spare parts industry, which is dominated by SMEs, has significantly grown in terms of numbers of companies, employment, and production. In 2005, exports of the automotive and automotive spare parts industries exceeded that of Turkey’s textile and clothing industries. This suggests that FDI linked to export-oriented sectors focusing on the EU market is beginning to modernize manufacturing in Turkey - as occurred in the Central European countries, during their run-up to EU accession.

Instead of a conclusion

As a candidate country Turkey might have ‘missed the boat’ in terms of EU’s pre-accession financial assistance. On the other hand, lessons learned from previous accession experiences might be invaluable. In any case, prospects for absorbing EU financial assistance for the SME sector depend more on the capacity of the Turkish authorities to identify, articulate and address the needs of SMEs, and less on the amounts of financial assistance available. Since the EU has to date provided very little pre-accession financial assistance to Turkish SMEs, there is not much evidence to analyse. The opportunities associated with the programmes that have been initiated (focusing among other things on female entrepreneurship and clustering) have yet to be fully exploited by Turkey’s SMEs.

While Turkey’s negotiations with the EU are ongoing, Turkish SMEs have been discharging the de facto obligations of membership since 1995. This 10-year period has helped change the mindsets in the SME sector and created new ways for them to generate income, employment and value added. As Turkish SMEs have become more competitive during this time, it can be argued that EU integration has made the ‘backbone’ of the Turkish economy stronger. The biggest challenges, however, lie in improving the innovative capacity of Turkish industry, without which improvements in competitiveness cannot be sustained. Unfortunately, progress in this area has not been satisfactory. Turkey’s widening regional disparities pose another set of risks. Many of the positive statements made here are only applicable to SMEs located in Turkey’s developed western and central regions: SMEs in the underdeveloped east and southeast are still struggling.

The 10-year experience with the customs union has already generated some important benefits for Turkey’s SME sector, in the form of significant FDI inflows into the automotive sector and its local sub-contractors. Equally, a prolonged accession period could help Turkish industry and SMEs to prepare fully for the competitive pressures of the single market. Many of the countries that joined the EU in May 2004 captured many of the benefits of membership years before their formal accession, and Turkey may do likewise.

Murat Gursoy is a project manager in UNDP’s Country Office in Turkey.

The European Neighbourhood Policy: ‘Conditionality-lite’?

EU Enlargement and the Wider Neighbourhood


The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) evolved out of the final stage of the EU’s eastward enlargement, which required the EU to better define its relationship with the new eastern neighbours – the ‘outsiders’. Policy discussions in the Commission and the Council intensified from December 2002, when then Commission President Romano Prodi spoke of the enlarged EU’s need for a ‘ring of friends’. The policy was first outlined in a Commission communication on The Wider Europe in March 2003, which included the EU’s southern neighbours. ENP has a clear security dimension: the EU is concerned about illegal migration, organized crime, the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and environmental disasters or ethnic conflicts destabilizing or spilling over its borders. In July 2003 a task force under Günter Verheugen, then Commissioner for Enlargement, was set up to develop the strategy and process behind ENP. The European Security Strategy of December 2003 makes a secure neighbourhood one of the EU’s strategic objectives. ENP assumed its final form in a strategy paper of May 2004, which extended the policy coverage further to include the countries of the South Caucasus. Thus, 16 countries - six of which belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) - were designated as falling within Prodi’s notion of the ‘ring of friends’.1

ENP expresses three related concerns of the EU: the desire for political stability on the EU’s borders, the wish to mitigate the real or perceived negative effects of enlargement on neighbouring countries, and an attempt to define an alternative to full EU membership that would be attractive to the neighbours. ENP is located in the fuzzy space between the EU’s partnerships and full membership; it has been aptly described as ‘politics of the half-open door’. The difficulty for the EU is that some ENP countries, notably Ukraine, have already declared EU membership to be their strategic objective. Furthermore, as the EU’s response to Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ demonstrated, there is uncertainty within the EU itself as to whether ENP is an alternative, or precursor, to full membership.

During the EU’s eastward enlargement, the EU applied conditionality to secure compliance from the candidates on a wide range of political, economic and legal matters. The consistency and effectiveness of EU conditionality, however, has remained questionable, and the record of its impact on policy change is mixed across accession countries and policy areas. ENP might at first sight appear to be an alternative form of ‘conditionality-lite’ for countries that are not seen as future candidates. Paradoxically, the conditionality inherent in ENP is ‘hard’ rather than ‘soft’, as compliance is not rewarded with the ‘carrot’ of full membership.

The inconsistency of ENP is clear from the way the EU has amended its incentive structure. ENP was explicitly built around a country’s prospect to participate fully in the EU’s four freedoms (movement of goods, services, capital and persons). However, the freedom of movement of persons has proven to be too politically controversial and gradually it has been replaced by references to visa agreements. Moreover, the EU has increasingly stressed that ENP’s benefits are bilateral and economic (a free trade area and the offer of a ‘stake’ in the EU’s internal market) rather than political.
A key incentive in ENP is funding. It envisages the streamlining of technical assistance programmes for CIS countries, such as TACIS and Interreg, into a new financial ‘ENP Instrument’ (ENPI). It was proposed to commit almost €15 billion Euros to ENPI during the 2007-2013 budget period, but the final figure might be closer to €12 billion. In principle, such funding gives the EU leverage in securing reforms to promote ‘good governance’ and improvements in the trade and investment environment in ways that accord with the EU’s own security and economic interests, especially with regard to cross-border initiatives.

The core institutional elements of ENP are the bilateral, tailored ‘Action Plans’ between the EU and individual countries.2 This emphasis on bilateralism is hardly consistent with the claim to an overarching ‘neighbourhood’ policy. Legally, the Action Plans do not overrule the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (PCAs). Nevertheless, expectations may be raised given that the Action Plans resemble the ‘accession partnership documents’ with the candidate countries. The Action Plans and the monitoring process surrounding them are reminiscent of the formalism, generalities, and absence of clear benchmarks that characterized the regular reports on the candidate countries during the Eastern enlargement.

ENP’s sweep from the CIS to North Africa counterbalanced the interests of the EU’s northern and southern member states. Evidently however, the priorities for the eastern and southern dimensions of ENP are not easily reconcilable. A southern neighbour like Morocco has long ago seen its membership application refused on grounds of not being a ‘European’ country, whereas this argument cannot be applied to the eastern neighbours, such as Ukraine and Moldova. The sweep of ENP has widened the EU’s geopolitical concerns: the EU is becoming more directly engaged in managing regional and local crises on its periphery, which may require it to develop a stronger capacity for conflict management, possibly involving a military component. In the case of Eastern Europe and the CIS, such engagement creates tensions in the EU’s ‘strategic partnership’ with the Russian Federation, while, in the case of the Middle East, it causes friction with the United States.

The political inconsistencies of the EU’s implementation of ENP are most evident in the case of Ukraine. The EU-Ukraine Action Plan of February 2005 was largely negotiated under the old Kuchma regime. The ‘Orange Revolution’ of late 2004 and Yushchenko’s subsequent push for full membership forced the EU to dilute the logic of ENP and drop the label ‘neighbour’. The EU added ‘10 points’ to the Action Plan which included a promise to ‘respond’ if Ukraine implements the Action Plan, and a commitment to increased financial assistance. The core substance of the Action Plan has not changed but the door has been opened a little wider to the prospect of Ukraine’s membership of the Union. Ukraine’s Partnership and Cooperation Agreement is up for review in 2008, and the Action Plan adds to the momentum for a redefinition of the relationship between the EU and Ukraine at that stage. There seems to be a tacit acceptance in the Commission and the Council that the Action Plan has de facto acknowledged Ukraine’s membership prospect.

The limitations of ENP are all too apparent. It comprises a large number of diverse countries that are geographically spread out on the EU’s periphery, with very different reform challenges, and varying links with the EU or individual member states. In such conditions, the chances for ENP to become a coherent and successful foreign policy instrument for the EU are slim. In its current form ENP will work best in those countries that do not aim for membership, or have almost no prospect of securing it.

We can debate whether ENP evolved as a considered attempt by the EU to provide itself with a vision for the future relationship with its periphery, or was a rushed effort to give itself a breathing space after the 2004 enlargement. The paradox of ENP, however, is that as the ENP countries are adopting EU norms and legislation, and are being socialized into EU networks, the expectations for an ‘ENP-plus’ grows. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was the first serious test for ENP, and the EU blinked. The EU-Ukrainian relationship is likely to be redefined in a way that supersedes the ENP at the end of the three-year Action Plan. This could then have a knock-on effect on expectations elsewhere.

Gwendolyn Sasse is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative European Politics at the London School of Economics, and a deputy editor of Development and Transition. A fuller version of this piece will be published as ‘Conditionality-lite: The European Neighbourhood Policy and the EU’s Eastern Neighbours’, in: Costanza Musu and Nicola Casarini (eds), The Road to Convergence: European Foreign Policy in an Evolving International System, Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2006. g.sasse@lse.ac.uk

Daffi Prokopova

Bulgarian

16th April 1984
daffi@lex.bg; dprokopova@lex.bg
+359 885 326 224

My name is Daffi and I was born in Sofia. I have graduated from the University of Sofia with a B.A degree in Political Science and have recently obtained there a M.A. degree in Political Science. In addition, I am still studying International Relations in the Faculty of Law.

My academic interests concern theory of international relations and foreign policy and as well as conflict prevention and resolution. EU common foreign and security policy including energy security and EU enlargement policy is another field I am interest in.

During my studies I have made several internships in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Sofia Municipality, the National Assembly and in the Council of Ministers. I worked in the State Protocol to assist in the organisation of the 12th OSCE Ministerial Meeting. I still keep my place at the National Assembly where I make research on EU countries national legislation in the field of preservation and promotion of cultural heritage and in the field of ecology.

Since 2006 I have been working for BEF - an NGO organising international events for the purpose of promoting SE Europe business environment to potential foreign investors. In the period 2006-2007 I have been writing articles for The Region Magazine on the topic of the integration of Western Balkan countries to the EU.

I am a member of the UN Association of Bulgaria and the Student Diplomatic Club.