The EU has established a range of privileged partnerships with European states not seeking membership. A core feature of these partnerships is the extent to which they provide for participation in the EU internal market and so the free movement of goods, services, capital and people. Participation depends on the extent to which the European partner aligns with EU rules governing the operation of the internal market. Past agreements have involved various forms of approximation, equivalence and dynamic alignment with EU rules, occasionally supplemented with informal voluntary alignment. Over time, the EU has become more insistent on new and updated arrangements incorporating formalised and dynamic alignment with its rules and incorporated a degree of automaticity into alignment provisions. Such developments are important not only in the context of the EU’s evolving approach to safeguarding the integrity of it internal market but also as states seek to enhance relations with the EU, particularly as regards securing improved access to the internal market. The obvious example here, is the United Kingdom and the current Labour government’s commitment to ‘reset’ relations and remove ‘unnecessary barriers to trade’.

The paper considers the nature and extent of the dynamic regulatory arrangements contained in recent agreements concluded by the EU. The focus is on three sets of arrangements: the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland – now widely referred to as the Windsor Framework – that forms part of the United Kingdom’s Withdrawal Agreement and incorporates a novel form of automatic dynamic regulatory alignment; the association agreement concluded by the EU with Andorra and San Marino in 2024 that allows for the states’ participation in the EU internal market; and the outcome of the 2024 negotiations with Switzerland on new and updated ‘internal market’ agreements. The paper then considers the significance of these arrangements and the precedents they set for the nature and scope of any future EU-UK agreement governing improved access to the EU internal market.

The late 2024 agreement to significantly revise the bilateral treaties between the European Union and Switzerland had been a priority of the EU for well over a decade. Between 2014 and 2021, most efforts to significantly revise the complex bilateral arrangements between Brussels and Bern had been slow and unproductive. From 2021 to 2024, they were effectively frozen by Swiss recalcitrance. The speed in which negotiations proceeded in 2024 was notable given so many years of delay. This research argues that EU relations with non-members states in Western Europe - Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and the microstates - effectively were on hold for much of the Brexit period between 2016 and 2024. Brexit not only engulfed vast time and resources during the British-EU negotiation process, but lingering problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework, allowed issues such as the Swiss Bilaterals to remain unresolved. But with Brexit settled, the EU could not only devote more resources to the issue of Switzerland, but also had new strategies gained from Brexit negotiations to bring to bear. Hence while Brexit may have helped delay and stymie progress on Swiss-EU bilateral reforms, it also ultimately put the EU in an advantageous position by the end of the process in which it ended up getting significant concessions. Hence the Swiss case may be the first post-Brexit examples of the EU's new negotiating power and strategies with non-members in not only Western Europe but also possible candidate and association states in the East. While the withdrawal of the United Kingdom is often viewed as the primary outcome of Brexit, its longterm impact on the EU's relationships and strategies of negotiation with non-member states in Europe may be one of imporatnt secondary consequences.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Georgia have pursued distinct paths in shaping their identity, foreign policy, and the role of Europe within them. Georgia has swiftly asserted its Europeanness and natural belonging to the European family, anchoring Euro-Atlantic integration as a foreign policy priority. Conversely, Armenia, while affirming a European identity, has prioritised relations with its Russian security ally and integrated into Moscow-led regional structures.

Starting from this initial comparison, this paper examines how, since the early 2020s, both countries have begun redefining their Selves and relations to Others, following nearly inverted trajectories. These shifts have become particularly evident since the onset of the full-scale war in Ukraine: Georgia has visibly disengaged from the EU, while Armenia has demonstrated an increasing willingness to deepen its engagement and integration with it.

Drawing on interviews with local actors in Armenia and Georgia, this paper highlights these shifting identities and foreign policy orientations, taking into account the impact of the full-scale war in Ukraine, as well as of domestic factors, and relations with other significant actors. It argues that major reconfigurations in regional dynamics and relations to Europe are currently unfolding in the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood, and particularly in the South Caucasus, at a time when the EU is finally opening its door to enlargement.

This paper explores the myth of the social contract at the European Union (EU) level in order to assess the expansion of European integration and its influence on the unfolding of democratic aspirations in liberalizing societies. As a political myth, the social contract is dynamic and able to transform itself to address social change and stimulate the creation, diffusion and transformation of other socio-political myths. As such, it has the capacity to adapt itself to different political settings, social demands and individual or collective expectations. This adaptability is particularly relevant in an international environment marked by rapid acceleration, polycrisis (financial, war and refugees, climate and ecological) and manifold societal challenges. Based on this understanding, the paper assesses how political mythologies associated influence the continuous construction of the social contract myth in the EU. To do so, the paper focuses on two transitions propelled by ongoing crises: the EU enlargement – revamped by the war in Ukraine and the EU’s so-called geopolitical turn – and the EU green transition – arguably emerging as a response to the climate crisis. By focusing on these two dimensions of analysis, the paper aims at shedding light on top-down and bottom-up dynamics of both acceptance and resistance to the EU and its emerging social contract. Quantitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews, content analysis and critical discourse analysis will support the research. The study of EU enlargement will also benefit from a case-study approach, focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Turkey. The articulated analysis of these two dimensions opens important avenues to explore the coherence, intertwinement and societal outcomes of different political mythologies mobilized in the continuous construction of an EU social contract.