The EU's predominant concept of inside/outside dimensions, the stop of enlargements, and the Eastern European deadlock

The European Union’s predominant conception of inside/outside dimensions reveals an evident modern territorial character, due to the fact that the spatial assumptions of the “architects” of the Europe of Maastricht and Brussels (especially the ideas of both territorial cohesion and territorial continuity) contributes to an evident emergence of a modern and sharpened territorial building of the new European space. The European spatial development policy discourse is based on a strong notion of territoriality and accepts the instrument of hard and closed border, and of a sharp inside/outside dichotomy. As a consequence, the EU’s eastern border has created a new divide in Europe, related to many problems, aporias, contradictions, and consequences. At the beginning of this process, the intricate interplay between the internal and external facets of European integration has meant that the Union’s enlargement to Eastern Europe has been seen as one of its most effective foreign policy tools towards the East of Europe. It acted as an instrument through which the Union wanted to enhance stability in its immediate neighbourhood, having a stake in preserving stability on its doorstep. But during the last decade the danger of an “institutional overstretch” stimulated EU’s politicians to stop de facto enlargements to East, and this old foreign policy tool became totally inefficient especially because the previous open “European project” of inclusion is increasingly perceived, especially by the EU’s Eastern neighbours, as an evident form of final exclusion, and political, economical, social marginalization. As a consequence, by relinquishing enlargement, the EU is in danger of losing its capacity for effectively stabilising its nearest neighbours. The acknowledgement of the indivisibility of security in Europe became much clearer than in the past: the EU cannot feel secure and promote prosperity if the rest of the continent is in a downward spiral towards increased insecurity and poverty. But choosing something between inside and outside, expressed by the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern European Partnership – two attempts at devising new ways through which the EU tries to project stability in its neighbourhood -seems not enough to solve the contradictions contained in the same concept of territoriality, and of inside/outside dimensions of international relations.