Whole, Free and Integrated? A Transatlantic Perspective on the European Neighbourhood

Abstract

Since the end of the cold war until 2004, the United States and the European Union held largely complementary views towards the European neighbourhood. Washington’s foreign policy mantra was that of a Europe ‘whole and free’, where the dividing lines inherited from the cold war were to dissolve through the gradual inclusion of Central and Eastern Europe in the Euro-Atlantic family of nations. The EU concomitantly focused on its enlargement strategy, which ensured that the transition of the former communist countries would be benchmarked and monitored, in order to attain the ultimate goal of their full integration into the EU. Is this transatlantic goal of making Europe whole, free and integrated still valid in the post-2004 European context, and to what extent is it applicable to the new European neighbourhood? This study sets to provide answers to these questions by offering a transatlantic perspective on the security and integration challenges characterising the enlarging Europe and its periphery. After providing a conceptual outlook of the US and the EU approaches to the wider European context, the article maps out transatlantic convergence and divergence in the countries and regions concerned. On the basis of this assessment, it ponders a set of recommendations at the normative, methodological and geopolitical levels to inspire a transatlantic agenda that accounts for the emergence of a wider European neighbourhood.