Beyond Fortress ‘EU’rope? Bordering and Cross-bordering along the European External Frontiers

This introductory chapter gives an overview of debates about the contents and limits of the European Neighbourhood Policy, and of how the book intends to contribute to them. It focuses, in particular, on how the European Neighbourhood Policy impacts the ongoing construction of the European Union’s external frontiers, and introduces the wide variety of ways through which such re-bordering is pursued. The Neighbourhood Policy is the result of an attempt by European institutions to define the proper balance between openness and closure towards its neighbourhood, regionalization and bordering, cross-border coopera-tion and the securitization of the EU external borders, the idea of a “fortress Europe” on the one hand and the imaginary of a “wider Europe” with “concentric circles” of integration on the other. These bordering and cross-bordering proc-esses, it is argued, are not contradictory but proceed side-by-side in an explicit at-tempt to construct a selective and fragmented border regime, and for the recon-figuration of ‘EU’rope as a post-Westphalian and normative global actor.