Resilience of the EU and leverage of the european neighbourhood policy: Good news and bad news

Abstract

Since her very beginning, the European Union (EU) has been subject to various challenges, even called crises by common parlance. In this chapter, we argue that the EU shows remarkable stability and significantly strong resilience to conflicts. Testing this statement, we deal with time series analysis, that is, Vector Auto Regression Modelling is used to test this statement for the purpose of impulse response function interpretation. It is shown that the onset of much debated challenges the EU faced has even statistically significantly increased the overall positive opinion of Europeans on the EU, thereby strengthening her legitimacy and political significance. Findings prove significant characteristics of strong resilience to shocks. Implications for the leverage of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) point to low leverage of ENP due to a biased use of instruments. To improve the leverage of ENP, its benchmark indicators have to meet concerns about the dynamics of hybrid democracies.