ABSTRACT
The boundaries of ‘Europe’ have always been contentious. Nor is it clear that they can be marked out in cultural terms, or by patterns of interaction, or by ‘shared values’. In their absence, both European Union and Soviet or Russian leaders have set out pre-emptive claims to speak in the name of a one-divided continent: but the EU member countries account for not much more than a third of the entire continental territory, and Soviet or Russian leaders have had limited success in promoting an alternative view of the continent as a ‘common home’ or as a ‘Greater Europe’ that might possibly embrace the United States. If there can be no single understanding of ‘Europe’, there can be no single understanding of its ‘neighbourhood’, and certainly not one that assumes it represents a relatively short period of transition on a process that leads necessarily to full EU membership.
