Post-Power EU?

The European Union has tried to use innovative practices to foment good relations with borderland countries since the 1990s. Nevertheless, the success of the EU's framework policies can be questioned in view of the relative disinterest or reluctance which countries close to the Union's borders have displayed. This work wil try to explain the policies' failure to draw partners closer by exploring how the EU constructs and acts out its foreign policy identity vis-à-vis neighboring candidate and non-candidate countries. We will use the Barcelona Process/Union for the Mediterranean, the Northern Dimension and the Stabilization and Association process for Western Balkans to examine how the EU post-power identitarian projection creates contradictions and/or dissonance with non- member neighboring countries and to illustrate why the EU policies have not met with the expectations they generated at their inception.