MANAGEMENT OF SECURITY IN EU`S NEIGHBORHOOD: UNION’S TACTICS REVISITED

Authors : Sinem Akgül AÇIKMEŞE

Pages : 1-25

View : 22 | Download : 6

Publication Date : 2005-09-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The latest round of enlargement of the European Union has profoundly altered the number, identity and the nature of neighbors that form Union`s external frontier. Inevitably, the EU has been confronted with a new set of security challenges - such as violent conflicts, cross-border crimes, economic instabilities, terrorist movements, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethnicity and minority problems etc.- in its current neighborhood stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic and from the Aegean to the Mediterranean. Extending the zone of security around the EU`s periphery by addressing the above-mentioned problems, and thereby dealing with the security challenges of the 21st century, has become one of the Union`s strategic objectives declared by Javier Solana at the Thessaloniki European Council in June 2003: “Our task is to promote a ring of wellgoverned countries to the East of the EU and on the borders of the Mediterranean with whom we can enjoy close and cooperative relations.”1 Moreover, Solana`s forward thinking has become the strategy of the day with Article I-56 of the draft Constitutional Treaty of the EU by stipulating that the Union shall develop a special relationship with neighboring states in order to create an area of security and prosperity founded on the values of the Union.
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