The EU’s unequal impact on its eastern and southern neighbours

The CIDOB Foundation has hosted The dimensions of security in the European Neighbourhood Policy: energy, borders and conflict management, a research seminar focusing on the impact of EU policies on the countries of Eastern Europe and of the Mediterranean basin. Organised by the University Institute of European Studies (IUEE) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, in collaboration with the CIDOB Foundation and the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), the seminar took place within the support framework that the aforementioned institutions have created for the research project EUPROX (coordination, integration and Europe-isation in the proximity of the European Union) of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy, directed by Dr. Esther Barbé. 

The seminar covered a wide range of crucial issues, such as the energy question, the management of conflicts and the issue of justice and home affairs, with the latter including a discussion of immigration policy. Participants debated using this analytical framework, producing the first results of applying it systematically from a comparative perspective on different policies (trade, energy, the environment, foreign policy and security, good government and immigration) and on different countries (Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, Croatia, Ukraine, Russia and Georgia). 

Thus, a shared framework of analysis was provided for presentations on such varied issues as the impact of Europe’s visa policy on the Ukraine, the effects of the EU's energy policy on Morocco and the impact of its foreign policy on the resolution of the Transnistrian conflict in Moldavia. In the addresses presented and the debates that followed, the speakers and participants highlighted the fact that in order to evaluate the impact of EU policies on the countries of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area, both internal factors of the EU (particularly, coherence between policies and cooperation between institutions) and factors relating to each member country should be taken into consideration. It was stressed, for example, that political or legislative harmonisation generates certain negative impacts in the neighbouring countries, and that these could be taken advantage of by sectors that oppose a closer relationship with the EU. The seminar became the presentation platform for the research that will be guiding the work of the group, as well as to exchange impressions with representatives from the government ─ including José Luis Pardo, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ferran Tarradellas, from the European Commission ─ as well as representatives from the Spanish and international academic sphere. 

EUPROX is a research project that exists within the framework of the National I+D+I Plan 2004-2007, and which represents an attempt to create a framework of analysis to explain why European Union policies have different impacts in each of the Union's neighbouring countries. The project possesses a theoretical framework to analyse three processes: Europe-isation (through which neighbouring countries adopt part of the EU's regulations and policies), internationalisation (according to which the EU becomes a transmitter of regulations of an international nature) and coordination (in those cases in which the EU and the state in question create regulations that are only applied in their bilateral relations). With this seminar, the CIDOB Foundation has renewed its commitment to the promotion of research into issues that are crucial both for the EU and for its eastern and Mediterranean neighbours.