Special issue: the European Union and its Eastern Partnership neighbours—a framework to evaluate performance

The aim of this Special Issue is to develop a comprehensive framework to assess performance of the EU as a foreign policy actor. In doing so, the Special Issue, in an interdisciplinary manner, brings together three strands of the literature—European studies, public policy and organizational management. The proposed framework is subsequently tested in the case of the EU’s policy towards wider Europe (Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). It addresses existing research gaps in two ways. Conceptually, by developing a framework for analysing EU performance, we add to the emerging research trend that intends to go beyond the study of what the EU is, but rather what it does, why it does it and with what effect. And empirically, our contribution is assessing EU performance across all the six countries of the Eastern Partnership (EaP), something that has not been done previously.