The EU and ‘Wider Europe’: Toward an Alternative Geopolitics of Regional Cooperation?

In response to enlargement, the EU’s ‘Wider Europe’ initiative and emerging European Neighbourhood Policy envisage ‘positive interdependence’ with neighbouring countries of the ‘East’ and ‘South’. ‘Partnerships’ are seen as an alternative to direct EU membership and thus as a sustainable incentive for regional cooperation. In order to be effective, such regional partnerships must transcend market logics and accommodate heterogeneous economic and socio-political realities. However, Wider Europe is characterised, in terms of realpolitik, by competing rationales of ‘stability’, ‘prosperity’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘security’ and thus by considerable potential for exclusionary policies. It is unclear whether exclusion can be counterbalanced by multilevel and ‘de-centred’ forms of regional engagement that also define Wider Europe. Applying a pragmatic approach, discussion will centre on rationales, discourses and reconceptualisations of European space upon which the notion of Wider Europe is being constructed and on whether they signal gradual changes in the direction of a ‘post-Westphalian’ geopolitics.