Europe’s Neighbourhood Policy Review (ENP)

1/ ENP Review - why now?
Every year the EC publishes a communication on the outcome of its policies, in this case the European Neighbourhood policy. However, the 2011 Communication is more specific and more important due to the fact that
i) it coincides with the normal mid-term review on the ENP
ii) has to take into account the institutional changes set in place by the Lisbon Treaty - including the creation of the EEAS
iii) the Arab spring revolutions had a major impact on the ENP and its financial instruments should be conceptionalised

2/ ENP Review - what is new?
The revised ENP approach focuses on following three aspects:
i) shared committment and universal values (new focus on deep democracy - including strengthening civil society)
ii) mutual accountability - (meaning that funds are allocated only if the respective beneficiary is really stepping forward in its reforms)
iii) differentiation of ENP policy making - (meaning basically that there will be a tailor-made approach to the Southern dimension and the Eastern dimension of the ENP and to each country individually)

3/ What is the financial support for this new approach?
In order to commit to the ambitious goals of the new ENP an enlarged budget is proposed for the ENI (European Neighbourhood Instrument - the financial instrument for the ENP):
i) proposal for the introduction of new instrument: 'Endowment for democracy' which shall help to finance civil society organisations and political parties (budget 2 billion €) until 2013)
ii) introduction of the Civil Society Facility for 2011-2013 - same approach, financing civil society actors and media stakeholders, but NOT regions.
iii) the Commission is also aiming for shorter programming periods and better alignment to other cooperation programmes such as ERDF programmes (INTERREG) and IPA funds

4/ What is in it for the regions?
i)Main programmes targeting regions are the cross-border cooperation programmes (CBC -programmes - including for example the Black Sea or Mediterranean Sea programme here) - see an older briefing note about the CBC-programmes attached.
More money will be dedicated to those programmes. However, disadvantage is that still only cross-border regions can participate in it, but no other regions. This means concretely: a region from Sweden would like to cooperate with an Eastern region from Georgia - this is NOT possible as no programme for such an interregional cooperation exists. And according to the speaker is NOT going to exist in the near future.
ii) Other possibilities for regions to get involved are the two subregional bodies of ARLEM (Mediterranean countries) and CORLEAP for the Eastern Partnership Countries

5/ Which role for macro-regions in the framework of ENP?
Developments on the macro-regions are monitored by the EEAS. However, currently there is no great support for using this approach in the near neighbourhood. The creation of a macro-region in the mediterranean is also NOT envisaged at the moment by the EEAS.

6/ Challenges to the ENP approach of the EC:
Raised by participants was the fact that the EU policies and programmes are not really understood well in the relevant ENP countries/regions. Jakub confirmed this, but mentioned that the capacities and the legitimacy of the EC are very low. Thus they cannot really go to those countries and tell their regions more about the policies, as the member states might not be too happy about it.