The (Non-)Normative Power EU and the European Neighbourhood Policy: An exceptional policy for an exceptional actor? European Political Economy Review No. 7 (Summer 2007), pp. 181-194

The ENP’s strong rhetoric in terms of the promotion of normative values, or “milieu goals”, has stimulated an interest in the academic community for the argument that the EU is somehow a “normative power”. This brief article will, however, sustain that the many contradictions inherent in the multifaceted EU’s foreign policy conducted in the Union’s relations with neighbouring countries make it difficult, for the time being, to fully concur with the assertion that the Union is a normative power