External governance effectiveness conditions in European Neighbourhood Policy implementation

Abstract

This paper systematises problems in European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) implementation in three fields of research and analyses them within the external governance framework, in order to find reasons for ENP's little effectiveness. Based on two research questions and by comparing internal structural problems in the EU, domestic factors in partner countries and international influence to effectiveness conditions from external governance theory, the thesis narrows down key aspects that the external policy's effectiveness depends on. The author's own contribution is the most evidently expressed in the third part where findings are compared to theory and analysed via empirical evidence. The most decisive aspects were found to be domestic factors in partner countries, such as political regime, the interests of governments, lack of democracy, national challenges and possible conflicts in partner countries. However, internal contradictions of the ENP structure – such as EU inconsistency in conditionality application, lack of consensus and focus, conflicting goals, inappropriate one-size fitsall structure and not offering a motivating enough outcome for conducting reforms – and international variables, such as the projection of EU as a soft power, regional competition, possible alternatives to EU integration and Russian foreign policy in its near abroad, have also had its influence on ENP's performance in some cases. The analysis in this paper proves the hypothesis that external policy's effectiveness depends more on external factors than on the policy's internal structure