Blog: A New Agenda for the EU Southern Neighbourhood?

The Southern Neighbourhood countries are believed to be of high importance to the EU being so close, with the ENP playing a key part in the Union’s foreign policy (UNESCO 2017). However, different dimensions of the ENP appear to be in uneven positions regarding the amount of attention and communicative effort allocated by the EU. The Eastern Partnership has its East StratCom Task Force, while the Southern Neighbourhood lacks such a tool.

Therefore, the main focus of EU’s communication to the Southern Neighbours still revolves around security and stabilisation. It concentrates on facilitating democratic political transition, promoting good governance, combating trans-border threats - the features of the transformative power concept. The EU wants to influence the transformation of Southern Partners and their transition to the kind of partners EU would benefit from dealing with. It wants to be associated with the role of “the main provider of humanitarian and development assistance” (JOIN 2021:13). However, the Union fails to make a more ambitious offer to the SN, which could naturally bring stability from an inside will to match the EU’s expectations.

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