We contribute to the literature of European Studies by introducing the
approach of Neighbourhood Europeanization. Based on insights from Membership
and Enlargement Europeanization, we reveal important inconsistencies of
Neighbourhood Europeanization through the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)
as well as a lack of robust empirical support for its effectiveness. We also
define core dimensions and determinants of Neighbourhood Europeanization and
implement this analytical framework for the case of Ukraine. Our analysis
clearly demonstrates substantial asymmetries in the ENP for Ukraine across
three dimensions we chose – democracy promotion, economic cooperation, and
Justice and Home Affairs, which clearly reflect the inconsistency of the ENP
concept, that is top-down formulation of EU interests combined with weak
conditionality. However, our analysis shows that despite Ukraine’s growing
frustration because of the lack of a membership perspective, there is a lot of
room for keeping up Ukraine’s motivation for Europeanization reforms.
Especially, widening and strengthening the linkage-mechanisms would allow to
overcome ENP inconsistency and to improve the effectiveness of Neighborhood
Europeanization
