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EU Law Export to the Eastern Neighbourhood

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EU External Relations Law and Policy in the Post-Lisbon Era

Abstract

This chapter examines the export of law in the EU’s external policy and the impact that the Lisbon Treaty may have on the existing formula for law export. It focuses on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which has centred on the intensive and extensive expansion of EU rules outside its borders. In this chapter we broaden the analysis of the EU’s external policy looking at the ENP against the global context for exporting law. We argue that, outside the accession context, the role of the EU in its neighbourhood is not dissimilar from that of other global actors—states or international organisations, which have promoted rules and norms to third countries for the purpose of development. We discuss the ENP law export formula against some key features of international experience, especially the factors behind effective legal transplantation. No doubt, the EU has sought to incorporate many of the lessons of exporting legal reform in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the question remains as to whether in its policy towards the neighbours the EU has moved from a paradigm based on compliance with EU law to one where ‘demand for law’ and political economy of legal reforms are sufficiently factored in. We argue that the Lisbon Treaty will not obliterate the essential contradictions and tensions underlying the EU’s policy towards its neighbours. However, it may still help to foster demand-driven, pragmatic law export formula more closely tailored to partners’ capacities and needs, in line with international experience of legal transplants.

Versions of this paper were presented at the BASEES Annual Conference, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam College, 2–4 April 2011 and the 41st Annual Conference of UACES, Cambridge, Robinson College, 5–7 September 2011. Preparation of this chapter was facilitated by the ESRC research grant (No. RES-360-25-0096).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ghazaryan, in the previous chapter in this volume, examines the institutional development of the ENP and Eastern Partnership and its workings in the post-Lisbon era.

  2. 2.

    Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005.

  3. 3.

    Magen 2006.

  4. 4.

    Noutcheva and Emerson 2005; Kelley 2006; Cremona and Hillion 2006.

  5. 5.

    Barbé et al. 2009.

  6. 6.

    Sasse 2008; Lavenex 2009.

  7. 7.

    See also the examination of the export of the EU’s values by Broberg (this volume).

  8. 8.

    In the accession context, ‘EU demands for pre-accession legal and institutional alignment––however onerous, one-sided and asymmetrical they may be––are legitimized by the prospect of full inclusion and the promise of future equality of participation.’ Magen 2006, 422.

  9. 9.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 507; Herdina 2007; Magen 2006, 398.

  10. 10.

    Kelley 2006; Magen 2006; Sasse 2008.

  11. 11.

    Escribano 2006.

  12. 12.

    A strong impetus to this phenomenon was given by the so called ‘old’ law and development movement in the 1960–1970s, where USAID and private US-based foundations and academics advocated the export Western legal templates in an effort to induce economic development. The early 1990s witnessed the revival of the efforts to promote development through law, primarily through the efforts of international organisations, like the World Bank and the IMF, as well as individual country’s development agencies. The ‘new’ law and development took place in a very different historical context and with very different theoretical underpinnings. See Tamanaha 1995; Trubek 2006.

  13. 13.

    Ajani 1995; deLisle 1999; Smits 2003.

  14. 14.

    Holmes 1999, 71.

  15. 15.

    Sacco 1991.

  16. 16.

    Trubek and Galanter 1974.

  17. 17.

    Santos 2006.

  18. 18.

    Hendley 1999; Dragneva 2007.

  19. 19.

    Hendley 1999; Holmes 1999, 71; Channell 2006.

  20. 20.

    Hendley 1999.

  21. 21.

    Channell 2006, 140.

  22. 22.

    Seidman and Seidman 1996; Dahan and Dine 2003.

  23. 23.

    Hendley 1999.

  24. 24.

    Aslund 1999.

  25. 25.

    Dragneva and Dimitrova 2010.

  26. 26.

    Davis and Trebilcock 2009.

  27. 27.

    Pistor 1999.

  28. 28.

    Markovits 2004.

  29. 29.

    Berkowitz et al. 2003, 167.

  30. 30.

    Kahn-Freund 1974, 27.

  31. 31.

    Kahn-Freund 1974, 4.

  32. 32.

    Daniels and Trebilcock 2004–2005.

  33. 33.

    Daniels and Trebilcock 2004–2005, 109–110.

  34. 34.

    Jacoby 2006; Wolczuk 2009; Langbein and Wolczuk 2011.

  35. 35.

    Peerenboom 2006.

  36. 36.

    Cohn 2010.

  37. 37.

    Peerenboom 2006, 827.

  38. 38.

    Taylor 2007.

  39. 39.

    Orucu 2002.

  40. 40.

    World Bank 2005, xiii.

  41. 41.

    Dañino 2004.

  42. 42.

    Santos 2006.

  43. 43.

    Rodrik 2006.

  44. 44.

    Escribano 2006.

  45. 45.

    EC/IS (Independent States) 1993.

  46. 46.

    Hillion 2005.

  47. 47.

    See, for example the EU-Ukraine PCA, Article 51.2, Official Journal L 049, 19/02/1998 P. 0001–0002.

  48. 48.

    Hillion 2005.

  49. 49.

    Batt et al. 2003; Gould 2004.

  50. 50.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 511.

  51. 51.

    ENEPO (EU Eastern Neighbourhood: Economic Potential and Future Development) 2007.

  52. 52.

    Kolesnichenko 2009.

  53. 53.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 517.

  54. 54.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 513.

  55. 55.

    Herdina 2007.

  56. 56.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 517.

  57. 57.

    Popescu and Wilson 2009, 98.

  58. 58.

    Lavenex and Schimmelfennig 2009, 794, 802.

  59. 59.

    Commission Communication 2004 ENP Strategy Paper, Brussels, 12.5.2004 COM (2004) 373 final.

  60. 60.

    Herdina 2007, 502.

  61. 61.

    Herdina 2007, 502.

  62. 62.

    Magen 2006, 422.

  63. 63.

    Noutcheva and Emerson loc. cit. no. 3.

  64. 64.

    Pistor 2000.

  65. 65.

    A good example of such a controversy is provided by cumulative voting for company directors, which was strongly recommended by influential legal reform advisors, such as Professor Bernard Black, in an effort to improve corporate governance (minority shareholder protection, in particular). Yet, its effectiveness has been challenged both as a matter of policy and academic analysis, see Maassen and Dragneva 2007.

  66. 66.

    The area of company law and corporate governance provides a good example of an area where there has been an active debate on global convergence, with strong views taken in extremes. Furthermore, the necessary level of company law harmonisation within the EU itself has also been subject to extensive debate.

  67. 67.

    For example, as Noutcheva and Emerson argue: ‘Partners are not in a position to determined the EU regulatory rules but they have more freedom to negotiate the import of a sub-set of those rules only. In this sense they are better placed than the accession candidates to define the limits of external influence on their domestic governance structures’. Noutcheva and Emerson 2005, 93.

  68. 68.

    Magen 2006, 422.

  69. 69.

    Carothers 2006, 23.

  70. 70.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 511.

  71. 71.

    Dodini and Fantini 2006, 511.

  72. 72.

    Grabbe 2003.

  73. 73.

    Grabbe 2003.

  74. 74.

    Report prepared for UEPLAC on ‘Making the draft Law on Joint Stock Companies more workable for enterprises and better aligned to international benchmark and EU legislation’, J. Tallineau, June 2007.

  75. 75.

    Kelley 2006; Cremona and Hillion 2006; Magen 2006, 422.

  76. 76.

    Modelling of the ENP on enlargement was conditioned by the available human resources within the Commission, especially a need to re-deploy Commission officials who worked in eastern enlargement and time pressure under which the policy was devised, Kelley 2006.

  77. 77.

    Sedelmeier 2007; Vachudova 2007.

  78. 78.

    Wolczuk 2009, 189.

  79. 79.

    The diverging aims behind the ENP for the EU Member States––as well as the EU institutions themselves––are explored in the contribution by Ghazaryan to this volume.

  80. 80.

    Sedelmeier 2007, 203.

  81. 81.

    Weber et al. 2007.

  82. 82.

    Cichocki 2010.

  83. 83.

    See, for example, on Ukraine’s disillusionment with the EU in general and the ENP in particular see Granovsky and Nanivska 2010.

  84. 84.

    Magen 2007, 387.

  85. 85.

    Sasse 2008; Wolczuk 2009.

  86. 86.

    European Council (2009) Declaration on the Eastern Partnership (Annex to the EU Presidency Conclusions), European Council summit, 19–20 March.

  87. 87.

    Joint Communication from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the European Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: A New Response to a Changing Neighbourhood, 25.05.2011, Com (2011) 303.

  88. 88.

    Cichocki 2010.

  89. 89.

    Bechev and Nicolaïdis 2010.

  90. 90.

    Ghazaryan, in this volume, reaches the same conclusion in view of the Council’s attempt to dominate the agenda of the ENP. But see also Blockmans and Laaksit (this volume) who investigate the future impact on external policies, including the ENP, of the composition of the EEAS by staff drawn from the EU institutions and national diplomatic services.

  91. 91.

    Joint Communication (2011).

  92. 92.

    See Langbein and Wolczuk 2011.

  93. 93.

    Razumkov Centre 2008; Wolczuk 2009.

  94. 94.

    Magen 2006, 424.

  95. 95.

    Leigh 2007.

  96. 96.

    Hillion 2010.

  97. 97.

    Kelley 2006, 50.

  98. 98.

    Author’s interview with the European Council official, March 2006.

  99. 99.

    Missiroli 2008, 5.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    Rilka Dragneva

  2. Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Kataryna Wolczuk

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    Paul James Cardwell

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Dragneva, R., Wolczuk, K. (2011). EU Law Export to the Eastern Neighbourhood. In: Cardwell, P. (eds) EU External Relations Law and Policy in the Post-Lisbon Era. T.M.C. Asser Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-823-1_11

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