Not so Wide, Europe : Reconsidering the Normative Power of the EU in European Foreign Policy

Through the use of political conditionality, the European Union (EU) exercises what Ian Manners has termed ‘normative power’, which many scholars and political analysts have regarded as the primary force behind the speedy democratization process of the 2004 enlargement of the EU. The two most recent enlargements of the EU have extended the Union into a new neighbourhood bordering still relatively democratically infant and unstable states such as Belarus and Ukraine. Following the relative success of conditionality during the enlargement process, the ENP was developed in 2003 to once again take advantage of conditionality to spread EU ‘norms’ and secure political stability at its borders, this time without the incentive of membership. This article analyzes the ability of the EU to exercise normative power in Eastern Europe. It presents the argument that despite systematic attempts to spread EU policies, or so-called ‘norms’ beyond the Union’s external borders, disparities in norm-adoption among ENP target-states exemplifies incongruence in the success of the EU’s normative power in foreign relations. To address the question of whether the EU demonstrates normative power through its application of the Neighbourhood Policy, the authors’ analysis will address the cases of Ukraine and Belarus