Institut für Europäische Politik [IEP]

"How to improve the European Neighbourhood Policy? Concepts, perceptions and policy recommendations for its Eastern dimension" — Programme, Conference Report and Papers now available

Am 4. und 5. November organisierte das IEP in Zusammenarbeit mit der Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) eine Expertenkonferenz zum Thema "How to improve the European Neighbourhood Policy? Concepts, perceptions and policy recommendations for its Eastern dimension", die in der Fondation Universitaire in Brüssel stattfand.

v.l.n.r.: Egidio Canciani, Deputy Head of the ENP General Coordination Unit, European Commission Hannes Swoboda, MEP, S & D, member of the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly; Michele Comelli, Senior Fellow, Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome; Elmar Brok, MEP, EPP, Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; Sieglinde Gstöhl, Professor, EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies Department, College of Europe, Bruges

The conference brought together 40 representatives from the academic and the policy-making communities, combining scholarly and policy-relevant perspectives. In the context of a changing policy environment the conference aimed at analysing the current state of the art of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and its most recent policy initiative for the Eastern dimension, the Eastern Partnership, in order to formulate policy recommendations for its improvement.
Therefore a first panel discussed the concepts of ownership and conditionality as the key guiding principles of the ENP and the Eastern Partnership, and examined how useful these concepts are and how they can successfully be implemented. In the second session the focus shifted towards the Eastern partner countries’ perception of the ENP and the Eastern Partnership, their evaluation of the ENP, how it could be improved and what they expect from the European Union in this respect. The ENP and the Eastern Partnership were discussed from Ukrainian, Moldovan and Belarusian perspectives. During the concluding session the previous discussion on the usefulness and effectiveness of ENP policy concepts and instruments and on the perceptions of the partner countries were summarised and synthesised in the form of concrete policy recommendations and discussed with practitioners from the European institutions working on ENP and Eastern Partnership.
We linked the roundtable format with the idea to have short written inputs from the participants, thereby benefiting from the variety of experts from academia and practice who attended the conference. These papers were distributed in advance to all participants and are now available here and on the TEPSA website.