ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to show how the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) decision-making process works at critical junctures by tracing the 2015 ENP review. It focuses on European Union's (EU)-level, Member State and neighbouring country actors involved in the process, their interests and the formal and informal processes through which they interact. The ENP has been no exception throughout its history: critical junctures have arisen when events in the neighbourhood forced EU policy-makers to rejig the policy framework to make it more effective, without challenging its core rationale or its basic function. Consultations with Southern Mediterranean countries were limited until the major decisions about the policy framework had been taken. In response to a Polish–Swedish initiative, the European Council decided, in May 2008, to establish an eastern partnership as a regional component of the ENP. EU Member States expressed their views both in writing and through the Council of Permanent Representatives before the consultation paper was drafted and circulated.
