ABSTRACT
Introduction The events of the Arab Spring and the subsequent Arab Winter have brought significant changes to the neighbourhood of Europe. It has created new opportunities and new threats, challenging the foreign policy quality and performance of the European Union (EU) as a provider of regional security in its southern neighbourhood. The overall objective of this book is to move beyond the conceptual debate on the EU’s “actorness and power”, and to focus on how the EU actually operates in various policy areas from a comparative perspective.1 This case study therefore focuses on EU’s Neighbourhood Policy in the context of it’s response to the Arab Spring in 2011/Arab Winter and compares the EU’s responses to those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in order to clarify the distinctiveness of the EU as an actor. This will also supply a better understanding of the inner-workings of the institution as a regional security provider as well as an evaluation of the EU’s capacities for adapting to a changing security environment.
