The impact of the Eastern enlargement of the European Union on the Euro-Mediterranean partnership: an analysis of member state preferences

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1167363 (Table of Contents)

The Barcelona Process / Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) is a foreign policy instrument to handle the southern neighborhood of the European Union. The EMP aims at creating an area of peace, stability and prosperity in the region. The enlargement waves of the European Union in 2004 and 2007 have brought 12 new member states, ten of which are the ex-Soviet states situated at the Central and Eastern Europe. This massive, eastern-oriented enlargement induced the European Commission to introduce the Wider Europe-European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) to establish a secure and coherent neighborhood along its new borders in the east. Although the ENP aims at bringing both the eastern and southern dimensions of European neighborhood, empirical data show that the pro-eastern policy preferences of the newly admitted member states along with Germany cause the ENP to move closer to the east at the expense of the South, therefore negatively affecting the present and the future of the EMP. This is because of the increased bargaining power of the new members, shifting the locus of power from Western Europe to Mittel Europa. The recent statements of pro-South EU members such as France might be a new impetus for the EMP, although one should be critical towards such individualistic policy proposals.