The EU’s Normative or Political Power for the Europeanisation of Post-Communist Europe – lessons from the Western Balkans and the War in Ukraine

After the inclusion of the EU’s norms of peace, liberty, democracy, respect of human rights and rule of law in the 1993 Copenhagen accession conditions had strongly contributed to the successful post-communist democratisation of countries in East Central and Baltic Europe, Ian Manners (2002) defined ‘Normative Power Europe’ (NPE) as the EU’s ability to spread its influence in the international arena relying on the power of its norms, rather than the political power of its member states. However, the scope of NPE has always been primarily restricted to countries which were included in the EU enlargement process. As soon as the EU begun feeling enlargement fatigue in the mid-2000s, the relevance of its normative power in spreading influence and norms to the countries in its neighbourhood faded and the EU’s foreign policy became more like the foreign policy of ‘a 19th century great [political] power’ (Manners, 2006). The political power of the EU has, however, remained weak. Without clear prospects for EU accession, numerous EU political incentives to resolve key stability and security issues in the Western Balkans have produced mixed or no results. The ‘EU future’ of the region promised twenty years ago (Thessaloniki Agenda, 2003) is still a very unforeseeable future. Recent developments related to the Russian miliary aggression against Ukraine and the ongoing war have shown that the EU has not led but largely followed the leadership of the US and its ex-member the UK in defining and launching political and military responses to the conflict. This paper argues that the EU’s attempts to rely on its political rather than normative power to influence developments in its post-communist neighbourhood will neither effectively promote peace, democracy and other key EU norms in this region nor open a clear pathway to EU membership for the countries within it.