European Neighbourhood Policy
5. Challenges
Since the launch of European Neighbourhood Policy in 2004, extraordinary efforts have been put into its development. Indeed, it has been said that if the European Neighbourhood Policy did not exist already, the EU would have to invent it. The Union simply needs a common policy to deal with its many neighbouring countries – the total population of which reaches 280 million.
However, the European Commission’s December 2006 report Strengthening of the European Neighbourhood Policy notes that: “Most of our neighbouring countries have made progress during these last years in economic and political reforms…Some partners have made the Action Plans the centrepiece of their domestic reform strategies and international financial institutions (IFIs) are also aligning their policies with them. Nevertheless, poverty and unemployment, mixed economic performance, corruption and weak governance remain major challenges.”
Moreover, problems in the EU neighbourhood “risk producing major spillovers for the EU, such as illegal immigration, unreliable energy supplies, environmental degradation and terrorism.”
Visa issues, EU’s role in solving long-standing conflicts in some regions (the Southern Caucasus, the Middle East and Moldova) and the liberalization of trade are widely recognized as weaker areas in ENP performance.
The innate, tailored nature of the policy dictates that the results are, by nature, mixed and incomparable. The ENP is essentially a series of bilateral agreements, tailored to suit a wide variety of countries and circumstances, which sometimes creates tensions and jealousies – also within the member states, as Eastern EU-states find it more important to support Eastern than Southern neighbours and vice versa. Also, the countries that were already committed to reform have made most progress in the ENP context; the ones with non-existing or slow reform programmes have also made little progress within the ENP. Finally, it has been claimed that the lack of “membership carrot” makes the policy less effective.
To remedy some of these problems, it has been suggested by Brussels think-tanks that the ENP countries should be regrouped. The EU could create a set of more coherent neighbourhood policies for each region. Four distinct clusters of neighbours, based on regional proximity as well as internal homogeneity and comparability, could be envisaged: Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, the Middle East, and North Africa EPC’s Reassessing the European Neighbourhood Policy and CEPS’s ENP Two Years on: Time indeed for an ’ENP plus’. In this vision, regional cooperation and integration would be complemented by the overarching ENP template, and incentives and rewards offered by the EU could be tailored for the entire region.
In her opening speech at the European Neighbourhood Policy Conference in Brussels, in September 2007, External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner outlined the key areas where the EU is seeking to reinforce the ENP in the future: economic integration, mobility, energy and financial and technical assistance.
The EU aims to create with its neighbours deep and comprehensive free trade agreements that go beyond the level of tariffs and tackle "beyond the border" issues - as well as services and investment. “We need to make sure that, whether it is construction products or toys, potatoes or pharmaceuticals, all products, - including those of most interest to our neighbours - really can enter our markets, without being stopped by phyto-sanitary, safety or quality standards.”
The EU wants simpler, cheaper and faster visa procedures for business, government, and educational travellers throughout its neighbourhood. The Commission proposes a new system of Mobility Partnerships, which would focus on the joint responsibility of all countries to tackle the challenges posed by migration, so that illegal migration can be better combated and more opportunities for legal migration given to third countries’ citizens.
The EU believes that integrated energy markets work in everyone’s favour – whether as a producer, transit or consumer country. At a bilateral level, the EU has its energy agreements with Azerbaijan, Morocco and Ukraine and the union hopes to seal similar deals with Algeria and Egypt. “A regional-level energy agreement would bring additional benefits, such as increasing competition; enhancing environmental and safety standards over a wider area; and providing a more stable investment framework.”
The EU is ready to increase technical and financial assistance to the ENP partners. Among other measures, additional ENP money is awarded to those who make the greatest progress in meeting their governance objectives under the Governance Facility.