ABSTRACT
Since the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was first proposed in 2003, numerous viewpoints have been offered. Some have judged the policy as a welcome and positive means to further relations between the European Union (EU) and neighbouring countries. The ENP is, according to these observers, seen as an innovative form of foreign policy, representing an attempt to explore mutually beneficial cooperation, and potentially as a tool to project the EU’s ‘soft’ or transformative power beyond its borders (Landaburu 2006a; Lippert 2008; Delcour and Tulmets 2008; Hahn 2015). Yet others have been more sceptical. The policy has been held as an EU-centric, bureaucratic and inflexible exercise representing little added value for ENP countries (Popescu and Wilson 2009; Hollis 2012; Kostanyan 2015). The values and norms promotion component of the ENP, whether political, socioeconomic, cultural or even administrative, has been the feature that has drawn most comments and critique from both practitioners and those in academia. Few fail to note the importance of values and norms as markers of the EU’s international identity and thus ‘natural’ to the ENP as an expression of EU foreign policy (Chaban and Vernygora 2013). However, many also refer to such values and norms export as being conditioned by imposition and power asymmetries (Del Sarto 2007; Korosteleva 2011; Langbein and Wolczuk 2012).
