Revamping the EU Approach Towards the Neighbouring and Enlargement Countries. Differentiation and EU Foreign Policy

Abstract

The panel aims at setting the basis for a systematic assessment of differentiated forms of integration in EU foreign policy towards the neighbouring and enlargement countries. Differentiated arrangements have been an essential feature of the EU since its initial phases. The EU adopted external DI in relation to its neighbourhood according to functional, historical and geographical criteria over time.As for internal DI, on several occasions informal groups of member states have steered EU foreign policy towards the neighbourhood, despite the progressive centralization stemming from EU foreign policy’s institutionalization process. Nonetheless, DI has only recently been expressly considered a plausible format for revamping the future of the European integration process in both its internal and external dimension. With this context in mind, the panel aims at discussing the potential benefits and risks of differentiated integration in EU foreign policy. The papers included in this panel will answer a series of questions regarding differentiation and EU foreign policy towards the neighbourhood: 1) What forms of DI are currently mostly utilized in EU foreign policy towards the Neighbourhood? 2) What explains DI? 3) Is the EU approach to its neighbourhood inevitably moving away from a distinction between countries in the process of joining the EU and countries that are not? Or will the EU continue on its path of pragmatic problem-solving through DI? 4) Why is internal DI persisting in EU foreign policy despite the centralization envisaged in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and to what effect? 5) And, what are the implications of differentiation for the theory of EU integration?

Title	Details
Differentiated Approach and Benign Hegemony in EU Relations with Neighbouring Countries. Between Voluntary Submission and Voluntary Mitigation of Power	View Paper Details
Internal Differentiated Integration in EU - The Cases of Libya and Syria	View Paper Details
Legal Uniformity and Differentiation in the EU Enlargement Context – The Rule of Law as a Case Study	View Paper Details