Assessing the performance of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe and in its neighbourhood

The goal of this Special Issue is to examine the performance of EU policies and processes as well as their impact in the ‘wider’ Eastern Europe. We make both a conceptual and an empirical contribution. Conceptually, we link the literature on EU policy and its impact in ‘wider’ Eastern Europe with the literature on performance and distinguish between process-driven and outcome-driven performance of the EU. Under process-driven performance we evaluate the nature of the capabilities and the mechanisms and procedures used by the European Union in order to pursue its stated objectives. Subsequently, under outcome-driven performance we examined whether or not EU goals or objectives have been achieved on the basis of the effects these have. Drawing on insights from enlargement, post-enlargement and ENP partner countries, the empirical contributions to this volume examine both the process-driven and outcome-driven performance of the EU through addressing two sets of questions: (1) what is the correlation between the EU’s outcome-driven performance and its internal processes of preference formation (process-driven performance)?; and (2) what is the relationship between the EU’s outcome-driven performance and the context of rewards/threats through which the EU engages with its partners? This introductory article therefore unpacks the notion of performance, proposes three modes of operationalization of performance and provides insights from the contributions to this Special Issue.