bart van vooren.

My doctoral thesis is entitled 'the european neighbourhood policy as a paradigm for coherence in EU external relations'. Below is a short abstract outlining the research question, and the interdisciplinary fashion in which my thesis seeks to answer it.

A bird’s eye view of EU external relations appears as a Harlequin's costume of policies defined according to geography, initiatives delineated in a topical fashion, ad hoc coordination (or not) on major international events, commonly defined principles, and so on; all stitched together in pursuit of Article 2 TEU: the task of the Union to assert its identity on the international scene. In that endeavour, the Union has famously suffered from the capability – expectations gap: the discrepancy between the increasing expectations within the EU and of third countries vis-à-vis the EU; and the Union’s ability to actually agree and engage its limited resources to certain common ends. This perceived inability to meet these external expectations can be partially attributed to the tripartite constitutional order underpinning EU external relations: the Member States, the Community and the Union qua Title V and Title VI of the EU Treaty, which all need to interact in a coherent fashion to achieve ‘EU’ external action.  The European Neighbourhod Policy (ENP) has been conceived in 2002-2003, and can be seen as an attempt by the EU and its Member States to overcome this problem both legally and politically.  To achieve that goal the ENP has been constructed in an institutionally, topically, and geographically all-encompassing fashion, aiming to present the Union as a single actor towards the Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood. In that context the present study aims to  answer the following research question: “to which extent does the legal framework of the Treaties allow for EU external relations to be conducted coherently, and to what extent is the European Neighbourhood Policy a paradigm for this endeavour?” By merging a focus on the law governing EU external action with the latest example of a purportedly ‘single’ policy encompassing all sites of EU constitutional authority, the thesis seeks to add a contribution to the ongoing - if seemingly perpetual - effort of furthering coherence in the Union’s relations with the world. Overall, the chapters are conceived to progress from the issues of EU external relations law to the assessment of those questions in the practical ENP context.  The conclusion on whether the ENP has contributed to the EU’s external policy coherence is mixed: on the one hand it is argued that a single brand is insufficient if it is not underpinned by a coherent legal framework, and suggestions are made towards that end; on the other hand, several chapters show that while problems on substantive coherence remain, the ENP has nevertheless delivered significant institutional, procedural and substantive innovations which are being fleshed out for future EU external relations conduct.