Of Friends and Fences: Europe’s Neighbourhood Policy and the ‘Gated Community Syndrome’

Abstract The goal of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the European Union’s recently launched initiative towards its ‘near abroad’, is “to avoid new dividing lines across the continent” and to establish around Europe’s edges a ‘ring of friends’ with whom the EU can enjoy “close, peaceful and co‐operative relations”. This paper argues that, despite its stated objectives, the ENP is actually reproducing — if not reinforcing — some of the existing barriers between the EU and its neighbours and, more problematically, is creating new ones. This tension is a symptom of a pathological condition affecting the ENP that is called here the ‘gated community syndrome’. In order to explain how the ENP ‘caught’ the syndrome, a sociological account is proposed, centred on the concept of ‘Schengen culture of internal security’. This account provides an alternative to institutionalist arguments that make reference to the legacy of the enlargement process, or to the contradictory dynamics characterizing the EU’s ‘external governance’ to explain the ENP’s shortcomings. It also sheds some light on the future of the ENP and whether it might be ‘cured’ of the gated community syndrome.