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2000s – New Horizons of Partnership
In November 2002 the EU Council of Ministers decided to put the relationships with neighboring countries to the new contract basis. At the December Summit in Copenhagen in 2002, the EU confirmed its willingness to build relationships with neighboring countries based on common values. The concept of “direct neighborhood” arises; this concept includes the opportunity of cross-border cooperation without creating buffer zones and ideological borders to neighboring countries, for which there is no possibility of joining the EU in the medium term. The problem of the concept of “direct neighborhood” realization was that the EU has used the policy of expansion as a tool for stabilization and welfare in Central and Eastern Europe, while leaving questions of the relationships of the candidate countries with their neighbors without consideration. This led to significant gaps in research of potential problems of the enlarged EU with neighboring countries.
In the project of the Constitutional Treaty, developed by the Convention, article 56 was devoted to the relationships between the EU and neighboring countries. According to this article, the aim of the development of the relationships of the EU with neighboring countries was the creation of spaces of welfare and good neighborliness, which is built on the values of the EU and is characterized by close relations based on peaceful cooperation. For this purpose, the EU, according to Art. III-227 of the Constitutional Treaty, can conclude and implement specific agreements with relevant countries, which may contain reciprocal rights and obligations and provide opportunities for interaction.
Developing this approach, the European Commission presented the document entitled “Big Europe - Neighborhood: A new framework for EU relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbors” on 11 March 2003. This document was framework for the formation of the neighborhood policy, which covers Russia, the Western Newly Independent States (Belarus, the Ukraine and Moldova) and the Southern Mediterranean countries. The European Union has recognized that, at least in the next decade the EU's ability to provide its citizens with security, stability and sustainable development is inseparably linked with the EU interests in close cooperation with neighboring countries.
The ENP was designed to unify and strengthen the two primary objectives of the EU in these areas:
1. cooperation with partners to fight poverty and create a space of general welfare and common values, based on in-depth, economic integration, a more intensive political and cultural relations, closer cross-border cooperation and shared responsibility of the EU and neighboring countries for the prevention of conflicts;
2. consolidation of the proposed by the EU specific benefits and preferential relations in differentiated framework that take into account the progress made by partner countries in political and economic reforms.
According to the document of the European Commission “Big Europe - Neighborhood: A new framework for EU relations with our Eastern and Southern Neighbors”, the concept of the ENP should be built with the following principles:
1. expansion of domestic market and regulatory structures;
2. preferential trade and market opening;
3. prospects for legal migration and freedom of movement;
4. more intensive cooperation in preventing and combating common security threats;
5. increased political participation of the EU in conflict prevention and crisis management;
6. efforts to promote human rights, expansion of cultural cooperation and understanding;
7. integration of transport, energy and telecommunication networks and the European Research Area;
8. new tools for investment promotion and protection of investments;
9. support for integration into the global trading system;
10. improved and more focused on the needs assistance:
11. new funding opportunities [284, pp. 10-14].
The overall declared objective of the Neighborhood Policy is to avoid creating new dividing lines, to ensure the welfare and safety. For the first time, the great importance of the neighboring countries for the EU was recognized, and it was stated that due to the different starting points and objectives of the neighboring countries there is no a single concept for all. In response to the achieved concrete progress in the implementation of shared values and effective implementation of political, economic and institutional reforms, the opportunity for closer economic integration with the EU should be given to neighboring countries. For this purpose, the EU offered the prospect of participation in the EU internal market and distribution of the four freedoms in these countries (freedom of movement, freedom of spillover of goods, services and capital). Long-term goal of the Neighborhood Policy was the development of agreements, based on which the relationships between the EU and neighboring countries, in the end, will come to the close political and economic conditions that already exist within the European Economic Area.
See also: Aims of Politics of Neighborhood
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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