"EU governance and Central and Eastern Europe: Where are the boundaries?"

Friis, Lykke and Murphy, Anna. (1997) "EU governance and Central and Eastern Europe: Where are the boundaries?". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The recent debate on multi-level governance in the EU literature has largely focused on internal governance within the European Union, whereas the external side of the coin has been neglected. Considering that the end of the Cold War has called upon the EU to participate in the construction of a new European order, this paper takes on the challenge of removing this bias: to what extent is the EU also able to govern the political space outside its borders and what consequences does this have for its internal governance capability? The paper approaches these questions in two key sections. It sets out to adapt the present governance concept to the EU's external activities. It introduces the concept of boundaries as the key link between the EU's own governance system, its external role and hence its ability to contribute to order. It argues that the EU's boundaries play a dual role: on the one hand clear, stable boundaries are a condition for effective (internal) governance; on the other hand, porous, fuzzy boundaries open up avenues for governance beyond its geographical territory. More specifically, the developed theoretical framework argues that governance beyond the EU is mainly determined by the very same factors that structure the EU's internal interaction. The second part of the paper applies the developed framework to the EU's relations with Central and Eastern Europe. It demonstrates how the EU since the end of the Cold War has been caught up in a tension between protecting its own governance system and producing order in the Central and Eastern European region. Although it has tried to limit this tension by fudging its transactional, cultural, and institutional boundaries, it has (in the middle of 1997) still not been able to find a stable balance between its two goals. The paper argues that an "unbundling of the territory of the EU," i.e. the acknowledgment that there will no longer be a "fit" between the EU's territory and authority--opening up for different kinds of membership and "enhanced co-operation"--could be a long-term stable solution. Underlining the link between external and internal governance this would however produce a very different EU.

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