ABSTRACT
In 2003, the European Commission announced that the reduction of poverty, the creation of an ‘area of shared prosperity and values based on deeper economic integration, intensified political and cultural relations, enhanced cross-border cooperation and shared responsibility for conflict prevention’ are at the core of the European Union’s (EU) development of relations with its eastern and southern neighbours (Commission of the European Communities 2003: 9). In return for successful implementation of political and economic reforms, the EU offers ‘concrete benefits and preferential relations’ to its neighbours (ibid.). Over a decade after the EU developed these objectives for relations with its neighbours, the European Neighbourhood Policy’s (ENP’s) ambitions to create peace and stability have been put to a hard test. The migration crisis and the conflict in Ukraine, in the aftermath of Crimea’s annexation by Russia in March 2014, are merely two in a series of examples demonstrating the tremendous challenges the ENP is faced with.
