Resilience has emerged as a key concept in EU foreign policy. The policy debate around this concept has been vigorous, but theoretical attempts to develop the concept are few. Covering fields of strategical importance, such as economic governance; growth and sustainable development; energy, environment and climate action; education, the labour market, and foreign affairs, this book is one of the first attempts to profoundly theorise the concept of ‘resilience’ in international relations by looking at several policy areas and countries. Faced with multiple crises (the economic crisis, the Brexit referendum, the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, geopolitics such as events in the Ukraine), and challenges with its integration process, the European Union needs to become not only more intelligent, more inclusive and more sustainable, but also more resilient and more capable of reacting to different internal and external shocks. This book integrates a systemic assessment of the regions’ specific shocks and risks in relation to internal vulnerabilities (i.e. structural economic, social, institutional and political fragility) and to their long and medium-term impact on the stability, security and sustainable development in the region.

Resilience has emerged as a key concept in EU foreign policy. The policy debate around this concept has been vigorous, but theoretical attempts to develop the concept are few. Covering fields of strategical importance, such as economic governance; growth and sustainable development; energy, environment and climate action; education, the labour market, and foreign affairs, this book is one of the first attempts to profoundly theorise the concept of ‘resilience’ in international relations by looking at several policy areas and countries. Faced with multiple crises (the economic crisis, the Brexit referendum, the refugee crisis, terrorist attacks, geopolitics such as events in the Ukraine), and challenges with its integration process, the European Union needs to become not only more intelligent, more inclusive and more sustainable, but also more resilient and more capable of reacting to different internal and external shocks. This book integrates a systemic assessment of the regions’ specific shocks and risks in relation to internal vulnerabilities (i.e. structural economic, social, institutional and political fragility) and to their long and medium-term impact on the stability, security and sustainable development in the region.

This book examines the strategies pursued by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) to foster resilience in the Middle East, Maghreb and Sahel regions, ranging from military operations to humanitarian assistance. Thanks to its constructive ambiguity, resilience can bring together policy communities and connect sponsors of reform with local societies, but also bridge rifts between and within the EU and NATO. However, existing resilience-based policies are fraught with policy, theoretical and normative dilemmas. This volume examines these dilemmas by including international relations, European politics and area studies scholars, as well as practitioners from armed forces, international organisations, humanitarian NGOs and think tanks.

This edited volume brings together some of the most important scholarly perspectives – in the form of both journal article reprints and original contributions – on the structure and dynamics of the EU’s multi-layered relations with its Eastern neighbours within the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework and beyond. In May 2019, the EU’s EaP – an ambitious and sophisticated policy framework, conjoining elements of cooperation and integration, with the EU’s six eastern neighbours, i.e. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – turned ten years. This anniversary, in conjunction with repeatedly voiced critique by scholars and policy-makers alike regarding the framework’s effectiveness and utility, led the EU to submit the EaP to a fundamental auditing and revision. Structured around both enduring and emerging issues in the broader EU-Eastern neighbourhood framework, this book provides a retrospective analysis of key structural and relational challenges, unfolding regional dynamics, distinctive forms of bilateral/multilateral engagement, whilst also offering a critical perspective on the contested future relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours. Looking backwards and providing a critical and thorough assessment of the first ten years of the EaP in practice, this book thinks forward and gauges its many potential future avenues. This comes at a crucial moment, as the EU and its six Eastern neighbours are in search of new and mutually acceptable forms of association.

This book connects the scholarly discussions on 'security' and 'resilience', by examining the various definitions and meanings of the terms in the EU's Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy, and in what ways the EU has attempted to define the relationship between security and resilience in its official rhetoric and in policy practice. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has largely been viewed as an extraordinary resilience test for the EU. The war has unleashed multiple crises ranging from security and asylum to energy and the economy, in turn raising questions not only on how the EU can ensure the resilience of its eastern partners, but also questions existential to the EU, such as institutional and policy reform, further EU enlargement and the EU's role in a rapidly changing global context of polarisation and fragmentation. The chapters in this edited volume draw on a diversity of original conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are combined with an empirical analysis of often overlooked dimensions of EU’s policy towards the EaP countries, drawing on the original data collected by the authors, including the semi-structured interviews. In light of the aforementioned challenges, the chapters to this book have only increased in relevance, pointing to pathways and opportunities for the EU to strengthen the resilience of its eastern partners and its own resilience in the future, and inviting policy-makers and scholars to reflect on potential pitfalls, contradictions and limitations of EU resilience-building. This book will be beneficial to students, scholars and academics interested in European Studies, Politics and International Security. The chapters in this book were originally published in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.

Several events in the past few years have dramatically shown how the interests of European citizens are directly affected by the stability, security and prosperity of their neighbouring regions. At the same time, the European Union and its member states face many challenges and dilemmas in designing and pursuing policies that not only effectively promote these interests, but also build stronger partnerships with neighbouring countries based on the values on which the Union is founded. First the Arab revolts and then Russia’s assertiveness in the eastern neighbourhood prompted reviews by the EU of its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), in 2011 and 2015, respectively. These reviews, in turn, have renewed scholarly interest in the ENP. By deliberately focusing on the recent literature (since 2011), this book by CEPS identifies the factors that explain the (lack of) effectiveness and coherence of the ENP. This exercise has resulted in a rich overview of and deep reflection on a wide variety of ENP-related themes, such as conditionality and leverage, the interests vs values dilemma and the role of third parties. The study identifies where there is consensus among scholars and where perspectives and judgements differ. It also identifies important gaps in the literature where further research is needed. This book will be of interest to a wide audience of officials, diplomats, parliamentarians, researchers at think tanks, civil society organisations, university teachers, trainers, students and journalists who want to know more about the challenges and dilemmas arising from the ENP. The work has been carried out by a team of researchers from CEPS in Brussels, with the support of the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

This book examines the effectiveness and consistency of EU democracy promotion in its Eastern neighbourhood between 1991 and 2014. It concludes that the EU’s democratization role in this region was, not surprisingly, weak within this time period. However, this weak role only took shape under four domestic and transnational conditions: (a) a higher cost-benefit balance of rule transfer, (b) a lower structural difficulty a given country would need to overcome on its way towards a democratic regime, (c) increased levels of authority distribution across branches of power, and (d) a higher extent of democratic diffusion resulting from regional interactions. In those countries where these domestic and transnational conditions were present, as in Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia, the EU’s democratizing influence was in causal terms only the tip of the iceberg. Most variation in regime dynamics remains to be explained by domestic and transnational contexts.