The European Union and Co-Constitutive External Engagement: An Analysis of EU-Eastern Neighbourhood Relations in the Policing Sector

Abstract

While recent studies have started to shift the focus from exploring the EU’s externalisation of its standards to neighbouring countries in a simplistic way to looking for more variation in dynamics, such as reciprocity, related works remain analytically and empirically underdeveloped. To fill this gap, this article first provides a novel framework for the operationalisation of the dynamics marking EU external engagement. Acknowledging that the macro-political and the meso-sectoral levels are decoupled in policy making and treating the EU and its relations as complex webs of relationality involving various actors, the article understands sectoral engagement to be characterised by decentralised ownership and cross-fertilisation. In empirical terms, it studies knowledge transfer in policing between two EU sectoral bodies–Europol and CEPOL–and the domestic law enforcement authorities of five Eastern Neighbourhood countries. Providing original empirical evidence, the research demonstrates how EU-Neighbourhood relations unfolding within ‘decentralised’, sector-level networks can be co-constitutive, drawing on the dynamics of tailored externalisation and the co-construction of standards.