Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally challenged the existing European security order, reinvigorating debates about how the European Union (EU) relates to its borderlands, understood as the practices and spaces of interaction between the EU and neighbouring countries to the East and South. Far from delivering on the promise of cooperation based on partnership, the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy has openly contradicted the principles of reciprocity and co-ownership on which it was supposed to operate. Instead, the EU has acted like an expanding empire, turning surrounding territories into vassal states and geopoliticising its neighbouring policies. In an attempt to move away from essentialist and Western-centric understandings of the EU’s “neighbourhood”, this panel draws on social relational theories to examine how the EU relates to its borderlands. The first paper, by Lovato, Juncos and Maurer, introduces a relational framework to capture cross-border relations involving multilevel systems of governance (like the EU). This framework includes both internal EU dynamics shaping its policies towards the borderlands (inside-out perspective) and the borderlands’ own reception and engagement with the EU (outside-in perspective). Contributions by Petri, Nagy and Slootmaeckers capture precisely this outside-in perspective. Slootmaeckers calls for a shift in the theoretization of enlargement, one that captures the agency of candidate countries as well as the co-constitutive relations between the EU and these same candidate countries, as well as among candidate countries themselves. Nagy's contribution focuses specifically on the renegotiation of enlargment narratives on the part of domestic actors in candidate countries, taking the case of Georgia. Petri, for her part, zooms in on the perception of the EU in candidate countries, paying particular attention to the role of EU Delegations as intermediaries between Brussels and local actors in Boznia and Herzegovina. Contributions from this panel are drawn from an accepted Special Issue in Geopolitics, which is an initiative led by the UACES research network RELATE.

Existing scholarly and policy approaches to the EU’s ‘neighbourhood’ have been criticized for being excessively Euro-centric, for geopoliticizing and securitizing relations with third countries, and for being generally ineffective. With this Introduction, we contend that relational theories can offer a less asymmetrical and biased understanding of the interactions between the EU and its borderlands. Relationality posits that outcomes in international relations are socially situated and that co-constitutive relations can shape actors and their actions even more profoundly than their material capabilities or structural constraints. The proposed framework thus focuses on the relations, practices and patterns of cooperation occurring at different levels of governance (vertical and horizontal) in and around Europe’s borderlands. Vertical governance refers here to the interactions occurring at various levels within the EU – between EU institutions and member states as well as within institutions themselves – that shape the Union’s policies to the East and South. Horizonal governance, instead, refers to the interactions between systems of governance across borders (e.g., between the EU and a third country’s government, as well as non-state actors). In an attempt to de-centre our conceptualization of the Union’s borderlands while offering a holistic picture, we apply this framework from the perspective of the EU’s borderlands looking in and from that of the EU looking out.

The European Union (EU) is expected to be an influential actor in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as the country is on its path towards EU accession: ‘Nowhere is the power of the EU, as an actor standing independently and above its member states, felt more powerfully than in the Western Balkans’ (Hasić, Džananović, & Ramić Mesihović, 2020, p. 417). As a ‘(potential) candidate country’ and signatory of the Sofia Declaration on the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans, BiH is expected to closely align with EU climate and energy targets. Yet, BiH is far from reaching the EU’s accession targets (in these sectors and in others), raising questions about domestic developments in BiH and the EU’s capacity to deliver on the promise of accession. Against this background, the EU Delegation in Sarajevo has to find ways of engaging constructively, representing ambitious EU targets (i.e. demands from Brussels), while avoiding a patronizing mode of interaction towards BiH stakeholders. Focusing on outreach related to the Green Agenda more specifically, this paper puts perceptions on the EU Delegation’s role and its relations with BiH actors in Sarajevo at the centre. Drawing on interviews with BiH and EU Member State actors in Sarajevo, the paper explores the EU’s enlargment policy by focusing on the multiplicity of interactions between the EU Delegation and its BiH counterparts. The findings suggests that the Union’s perception in BiH hangs precariously on EU diplomats’ ability to balance local expectations with EU headquarters’ demands.

Russia’s war against Ukraine marked a turning point in European politics as well as in the politics in South Caucasus. Shortly after the invasion, the Commission decided to grant Georgia the perspective to become a member of the Union, provided a number of priorities are addressed. These priorities, their fulfilment, and the EU’s final decision are interpreted differently by various actors in Georgia. This paper explores how social relational theories can contribute to the pluralistic understanding of the emerging narratives surrounding the Georgia’s candidacy application. Engaging with the scholarship of borders and borderlands, it discusses how civil society organisations contest geo-political understandings of the EU’s borders, and how they establish bordering practices to create alternative topologies relationally. First, the paper contextualises the Twelve Priorities that must be met for Georgia to be granted EU candidate status. Second, it reflects on the contested views around the possible outcomes of the EU candidacy decision. Building a fieldwork conducted in Georgia between May and July 2023, the paper outlines the emerging narratives to manage the emotional toll of EU candidacy (fears, hopes, justifications and claims). Third, it discusses the main turning points of the narratives dominating the discourse in Georgia. Lastly, the paper contextualises Georgia’s application along previous EU candidacy decision models that emerged in the narratives: the ‘Albanian model’ and the ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina model’. The paper thus shows how relational exchanges and bordering practices contribute to the renegotiation of existing topologies in EU candidacy status narratives.

Following the introduction of the Fundamentals First approach, the EU has positioned its values at the core of its enlargement process. As EU values are not an a priori of the EU but rather are constructed relationally, both within the EU and through its engagement with external actors, this article argues for a new theoretical approach to the enlargement process. In this article, I draw on my decade long inquiry into the political nature of LGBTI rights within the enlargement process to question how we define and conceptualize Europeanization as well as the neo-institutional theoretical frameworks used to analyze it. Acknowledging the central role values have taken within the process, I propose a new definition and analytical framework that emphasizes the relational and transnational nature of the process. I re-define Europeanization via enlargement as a process of negotiated transformation in which EU policies and norms are (re)defined, negotiated and transformed with both sides making compromises to further the political integration. In this analytical framework, I propose the logic of relationality as an overarching principle to overcome the implicit binary between sociological and rational choice institutional explanations of Europeanization. Additionally, the framework takes its field theory base seriously so that I foreground how different policy and relational fields are interrelated within the Europeanization process, so that changes in one cannot be understood without changes in the other. Finally, by emphasizing transactions over interactions, the proposed analytical framework argues that feedback loops are always already embedded within the process. Overall, this framework allows us to theorize how both the EU and candidate countries instrumentalize the so-called European values for political games within the enlargement process.