ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) launched the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) in response to the 2004 Eastern enlargement that reshaped the EU's borders and elicited a new policy framework for relations with the EU's new neighbors. The European Neighborhood Policy was designed to spread stability, security and prosperity, and prevent feelings of exclusion within the new neighbors. The ENP principles and instruments enshrined in the ENP Strategy Paper and later in the Action Plans have also come under considerable criticism. The ENP was criticized for placing Eastern and Mediterranean partners in the same basket without giving due regard to the principle of differentiation. The Eastern Partnership – a joint Polish-Swedish initiative – emerged as an attempt to revamp the ENP in light of its diminished appeal, and later, of the new geopolitical realities in the EU's Eastern neighborhood highlighted by the Russo-Georgian armed conflict of 2008.
