ABSTRACT
The biggest enlargement in the history of the EU not only brought 10 new members into the Union, but also multiplied the length of its external borders and created new neighbours and neighbourhoods. The EU decided to manage these extensive changes by creating a new institutionalized policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The EU constitutes an anomaly for traditional conceptual categories in international politics: it is neither a state, nor a normal international organization. Constructivist analysis in the discipline of international relations emphasizes socially constructed identity politics. In international politics, the self of the state and also its relation to the other manifests itself through its foreign policy. This chapter demonstrates how the European Neighbourhood Policy allows the Baltic States to construct their narrative of the self for the outside world and for themselves. It examines the neighbourhood concept and policy of the Baltic States against the broader background of EU and Russian policies in the shared neighbourhood.
