3. EU Instruments & Neighbourhood

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EU instruments and the autocratisation challenge in a dissensus-stricken neighbourhood

Work package 3 (WP3) will deal with the impact of increasing autocracy in the EU’s external partner countries and the relative efficiency of EU instruments in tackling them. It will shed light on the interplay between the dissensus within the EU and outside the EU, and actions and strategies seeking to tackle authoritarian challenges in the EU neighbourhood.

Empirical focus

The geographical scope of WP3 includes EU interactions with selected cases among the 16 European Neighboourhood Policy (Southern and/or Eastern Partners) and Enlargement countries (Western Balkans and Turkey). To capture the relevant dynamics at play, it will focus on three transversal challenges to liberal democracy:

  1. the relative autocratisation
  2. the relative efficiency of the EU’s Enlargement and (Eastern and Southern) Partnership Instruments regarding the promotion of democracy
  3. the impact of misinformation or anti-liberal campaigns.

The limited number of case studies will be selected based on:

  • the presence (or not) of processes of increasing autocracy in each country
  • the relative interdependence between each country and the EU, 
  • the degree of influence that the EU wields in each country through its policy instruments. 

Core tasks

The ultimate purpose of WP3 will be, to trace shifts in the EU policy’s approach to these challenges in the neighbourhood and assess to what extent the EU has successfully responded to the dissensus on liberal democracy emanating from the EU neighbourhood. This will be implemented via:

  • Assessing the shortcomings in EU neighbourhood instruments and practices Leader: PATRIR
  • Producing country-level narrative reports offering in-depth analysis of specific cases of autocratisation in the European neighbourhood Leader: Clingendael
  • Analysing the EU actors and instruments seeking to meet the challenge of increasing autocracy in the Neighbourhood Leader: ULB

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Co-funded by the European Union

This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Call HORIZON-CL2-2021-DEMOCRACY-01 – Grant agreement n°101061621

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