(17 September 2013) – In an article published today, Notre Europe-Jacques Delors Institute wonders about the limits of the EU and its integration and neighborhood policy.
The author, Jean-François Drevet, gives an account of the integration and enlargments logics and proposes an assesment of the European neighborhood policy which, according to him, is a necessary, if unevenly successful, policy.
Yet it is possible to note an expansion of the common policies’ sphere of action extending beyond the EU’s borders. It is not so much a group of stable borders which has taken shape, as a Europe of “concentric circles”, evoked by Jacques Delors, which has become an increasingly tangible reality.
Lying between the EU and a third circle of countries with a multiple geopolitical outlook (Russia, Turkey and the Middle East), the neighbourhood countries occupy a middle circle where an increase in interaction is proving insufficient to improve their political systems.