Strengthening resilience in the EU’s neighbourhood

EU-LISTCO Policy Paper 1 (2018)

This policy paper contributes to the debate on the implementation of the new resilience paradigm central to the EU‘s Global Strategy. It argues that the EU should clearly distinguish between regime stability as the capacity to persist or ‘bounce back’, and resilience as societal capacities to undergo processes of adaptation and transformation. Moreover, the EU should focus on legitimate institutions, appropriate institutional design, and social trust when strengthening resilience in its neighborhood. In order to help build resilience the EU needs to know its neighbors, find the right partners in its neighborhood, and provide the policy space for new resilience partnerships to develop.

Key Words: resilience, EU Global Strategy, legitimacy, social trust, institutional design.