Ukraine crisis scares the EU. How stable are the neighbors? A risk analysis paints a bleak picture, six countries fall all the way through.
The escalation in the Crimea is an alarm signal. She throws for neighboring Europeans an uncomfortable question: How should a good neighborhood work if around it only live problem cases? Because adjacent to the European Union (EU), there is now hardly a country behind its future security policy is not a question mark.
The map below shows in blue the 28 EU Member States, 22 of them also NATO members. Broken down by risk are those neighbors who are among the ten years ago, launched the EU’s neighborhood policy. Objective of the program was supposed to be a ring of stable states to the EU. Reviewed also are the countries with which the EU is negotiating to join.
As an indicator of the hotspot ranking the estimates for political risks (security and stability) were taken over the country analysis firm Economist Intelligence Unit.
The evaluation disillusioned. None of the neighboring countries is regarded as virtually risk-free. Only four in 24 of these states the stability and security situation is considered to be reasonably good, which would correspond to a school grade of Two to Three: Armenia, Israel, Morocco and Montenegro.
All other countries are rated significantly worse. In six of them the current situation is classified as very risky to equate with a grade five or worse: Egypt, Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Ukraine.
Ten years ago, the EU had ever thought about how it might work with a friendly neighborhood. The stated goal of its neighborhood policy was to create a “circle of friends” around the EU by creating a common free trade area, as well as political and social cooperation.
This plan called Stefan Lehne, scientists at the Carnegie Europe think tank, in an analysis last failed as clear. “The neighboring region has become increasingly unstable,” he writes. Instead of friends to the neighboring region threatens to become a crisis rather circle.
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