The idealism that engendered the European ??Neighbourhood Policy in 2004, later codified in the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, has since been reviewed to adapt to the turbulence that has befallen the EU and its neighbourhood. The ENP is now little more than an elegantly crafted fig leaf that purports to take a soft power approach to the EU's outer periphery, argues the author, but in effect it inclines more towards Realpolitik. By prioritising security interests over liberal values in increasingly transactional partnerships, the EU is atomising relations with its neighbouring countries. And without the political will and a strategic vision to guide relations with the neighbours of the EU's neighbours, the ENP remains in suspended animation.

Steven Blockmans is Senior Research Fellow and Head of EU Foreign Policy at CEPS, a Brussels-based think tank that has been consistently ranked among the ten best in the world. He is also Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam and a founding board member of the Centre for the Law of EU External Relations (CLEER).