The ‘renovated’ European neighbourhood policy and the new European external investment plan for Africa and the EU neighbourhood

In 2017, the EU implemented the mid-term review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and its financial instrument, the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI). The first elements of this new strategy, were adopted after the June 2016 Global Strategy of the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS), which contributed to the reorientation of the EU’s external action as a whole. In September 2016, the European Commission also proposed a new European External Investment Plan (EIP) for Af- rica and the EU Neighborhood. The implementation of the ENP mid-term review, the EUGS and the EIP are three indicators of the progressive reorientation of the EU’s external action in its neighbourhood. The aim of this article is, there- fore, to focus on the novelties of an approach that is now based, according to the EU’s Foreign and Se- curity Policy, on ‘principled pragmatism.’1