7 - The Quest for the Rest

Summary

Although lacking an accession perspective, countries subject to European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) have engaged with the EU in large-scale good governance reform efforts, attracting large amounts of EU funding and adopting numerous regulations. The findings of Chapter 7 are that EU-driven good governance interventions in both Eastern Europe (Ukraine, Moldova) and Africa (Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Rwanda) show poor impact and can serve rather as sources of lessons to be learned. The standard bureaucratic approach to anti-corruption that has developed during the ENP years has led so far to serious unintended consequences (such as the capture of anti-corruption agencies and their political instrumentalization) and to colossal amounts of money being spent on the least successful cases, as in the EU’s support for rule of law in Turkey,amounting to nearly EUR 1 billion, during exactly the decade when the country was sliding back.