EU Promotion of Democracy, Security and Stability in the Wider Europe: The Impossible Triangle

In this paper we will analyze, from a critical perspective, how the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) is being used as a policy externalization tool to achieve three main goals: Democracy, Security and Stability. The European Union is building up a Wider Europe using this mechanism in a double way trying to achieve security and economic influence, but forgetting democracy. Our hypothesis shows that the EU, through this approach, is looking to create an area of stability more than a democratic region based on the so-called European values (art. 2 EUT). In this respect, concentric circles are being built as a sort of wider and liquid external border in which rights and values are not any more a pre-requisite to have the so-called European perspective. This neo-medieval situation leads towards contradictions inside the EU itself because approaches, rights and demands differ depending on the circle the country belongs. In this sense, we want to test the concept “stabilitocracy”, used by Pavlovic to refer to Western Balkans, in the ENP countries, Eastern and Southern, being “a regime where undemocratic practices persist and the “West just turned a blind eye to this while simultaneously preaching the virtues of democracy and the rule of law” (2016). Besides, one of the policies implemented in ENP countries by the EU Foreign policy recently is the promotion of the resilience of civil society (in its narrow sense of civil society organizations and not citizenship at large). It has had poor results so far, either on democracy, stability or security.