ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Treaty of Lisbon significantly contributes to such an evolution and substantiates this claim by cutting open the provisions of Article 8 TEU. Article 8 TEU empowers the Union to develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union. Partly codifying past EU engagement towards its vicinity, it goes further than that: it establishes a specific EU competence for norms export. Anatomy considers the structures of living phenomena. The EU norms export towards the neighbourhood was, at least until the establishment of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), rather unspecific in substance and lacked an articulated underlying strategy. Premised on the belief that the body of EC economic rules was a recipe for modernisation, norm export clauses were inserted as a matter of course in bilateral agreements, without close consideration of the particular needs of the norm recipients.
