ENP effectiveness and implementation performance: an inside-out approach

The second and most relevant line of research on the ENP concerns implementation in terms of effectiveness and performance. In this context, the idea of a gap between rhetoric and practice is a recurrent and significant theme (Cavatorta & Rivetti, 2014). In light of Mediterranean countries’ immunity to sustainable reforms and to EU’s policy incentives, some scholars stress the existence of a “dysfunctional relationship” between the conceptual underpinnings of the ENP and its desired policy outcomes (Del Sarto & Schumacher, 2011, p. 934-35). Similarly, others identify in the ENP ‘the risk of a new “capability-expectation gap” in the international relations of the EU’ (Kahraman, 2005, p. 2). Lehne (2014) talks of “implementation problems” and “incoherent implementation”, while Tocci (2014) mentions a general ENP “failure”. Along the same lines, Whitman and Wolff (2010) point to the ENP as a policy that is “ineffective” in addressing challenges in the neighbourhood and Bosse (2007: 59) refers to a gap between political rhetoric on shared values and the capability to enforce these values. Others bring up the attention on the ENP “underperformance” (Gnedina & Popescu, 2012) and on the discrepancies between what the EU promises and what actually delivers (Bicchi, 2014).

Against this background, the scholarship working on the implementation of the ENP is mainly concerned with assessment, evaluation and impact in order to appraise outcomes as to whether the ENP has achieved its goals (e.g. Kleenmann, 2010; Bicchi, 2010b; Whitman & Wolff, 2010) and to investigate the factors that account for its shortcomings. Most explanations for ENP poor implementation adopt an “inside-out” approach, i.e. their analysis is conducted from the point of view of the EU, with a focus on the structural underpinnings of the ENP and on EU instruments, roles and capacities to fulfil the original goals of the policy. In this context, for some scholars the real cause behind ENP underperformance can be laid on the very nature of the policy and on its weak incentives unable to foster reforms in target countries. In the absence of a membership perspective, the ENP is not able to motivate neighbours to change their domestic institutions and policies because the promised incentives are too modest to obtain costly reforms (Whitman & Wolff, 2010; Epstein & Sedelmeier, 2008; Schimmelfennig, 2005; Schimmelfenning & Scholtz, 2008). This is particularly true for the Mediterranean, where the carrots offered in the context of the ENP are not sufficiently appealing for the neighbours to accept reforms and harmonization with EU rules (Tovias, 2010; Panebianco, 2012b; Youngs, 2005, p. 10). Furthermore, as the benefits on offer from the ENP are not directly connected to fulfilment of objectives and are rather only vaguely summarized at the start of the Action

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Plans, the latter can hardly provide a real incentive for reform (Smith, 2005). This is why the notion of “conditionality-lite” seems to be better suited to capture the weakness and vagueness of the incentives and conditions within the ENP (Sasse, 2008).

If implementation of the ENP consists in carrying out Actions Plans’ goals, then implementation is inevitably flawed in light of the weaknesses underneath these bilateral documents. Most scholars define the Action Plans as a patched shopping list, lacking a real plan for implementation and reflecting a policy that is overloaded by a huge density of goals (Herman, 2006; Missiroli, 2007). Others stress the absence of clear benchmarking, the lack of criteria and timetables for implementation, and the ambiguity of concepts -such as democracy or rule of law- that vaguely specify the envisaged reforms (Del Sarto & Schumacher, 2011; Balfour, 2007; Smith, 2005). On this point of view, the Action Plans are a “masterpiece of diplomacy” (Del Sarto, 2007, p. 71) as their ambiguity is the only mean to overcome the impasse of interests that are often difficult to reconcile in the negotiations between the EU and the neighbours.

Other authors focus on the interests, role and actorness of the EU, stressing that the ENP is designed to meet the self-interest of the EU and its member states (Missiroli, 2010; Smith, 2005; Cavatorta et al. 2008). In particular, if the ENP is not able to fulfil its promised goals in the domain of democracy and human rights, it is because in the neighbourhood the EU is a realist actor in normative clothes and pursues a realist agenda where values are tramped by stability and security concerns (Seeberg, 2009; Panebianco, 2008; Emerson, et al., 2005; Pace, 2007; Tocci, 2006). Therefore, ENP implementation in this domain is flawed because of the unwillingness of the EU to apply conditionality and to endanger stability in the name of democratic reforms. “EU values vs. EU interests” has thus become a recurring theme in the literature concerned with the ENP and its implementation. Many academic works have adopted a qualitative and “content” analysis approach aimed at analysing the words in the ENP documents and their meanings, in order to assess the gap between rhetoric and practice. The prevailing idea shared by scholars is that the EU has not been consistent in the promotion of values, which remains unsatisfactory on the ground in the name of a logic of utility (Barbé & Johansson-Nogués , 2008; Bosse, 2007; Bogutcaia, Bosse, & Schmidt-Felzmann, 2006; Jeandesboz, 2007).

After the Arab Spring, the academic debate on the performance of the ENP has become even more heated. A plethora of academic works agree that the Arab revolts were a clear litmus test for the weakness of EU policy and a challenge to the traditional assumptions of stability over political change (Tocci & Cassarino, 2011; Driss, 2012; Balfour, 2012a; Panebianco, 2012a; Behr, 2013; Freudenstein, 2011; Perthes, 2011). While someone analyses the failure of the ENP as a consequence of the changing

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geopolitical context and of the dramatic transformation of the neighbourhood (Tocci, 2014), most of the post-2011 literature continues to link the discussion on ENP implementation to its policy design, pointing to the incapability of the EU approach to respond adequately to rapidly changing circumstances (Lehne, 2014). Scholars focus on the factors that explain policy failure in light of the uprisings, while critically analyse the reviewed ENP and assess the extent to which it embodies a real change vis-à-vis the past. In this regard, ENP performance is analysed as affected by an approach that is not really new and where the logic of the “more for more” is actually a “more of the same” (Bicchi, 2014a; Ebeid, 2012; Schumacher, 2011; Teti, 2012; Khader, 2013). Furthermore, implementation risks to be hampered by the lack of EU delivering capacities in light of its institutional structure (Morillas & Soler i Lecha, 2012). Since in the field of the “more for more” member states are the real decision makers, scholars question the real willingness and capacity of the EU to deliver the promised incentives and to implement monitoring mechanisms (Balfour, 2012b; Tocci & Cassarino, 2011; Tocci & Colombo, 2012).