On 3-4 December 2015, Dr Dimitris BOURIS, Research Fellow at the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair at the Natolin (Warsaw) campus of the College of Europe, participated in the workshop "Powerless Europe? Exploring the EU’s Power Towards the Southern Neighbourhood", which was organized by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) in Stockholm.
The workshop brought together a number of scholars from the fields of European Integration Studies (EIS), International Relations (IR), and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) area studies in order to explore the ways in which the European Union may be understood to exercise power in global politics, with a particular focus on the aftermath of the turmoil in the MENA region after the events of the so-called "Arab Spring".
Theoretically, the workshop engaged with the scholarly debate about the ways in which the EU exercises power in global politics, covering the notion of "normative power Europe" as well as critical and post-colonial perspectives.
Empirically, the workshop sought to explore how the EU attempts to exercise power in the region through classic diplomacy, economic policies, border controls, democracy promotion, and development aid. By doing so, the workshop explored the possibilities as well as limitations of the EU’s influence in its southern neighbourhood and beyond.