Description
Recent debates on the European Union’s geopolitical turn have largely focused on strategic discourse, while paying less attention to how this shift is embedded in concrete external policy instruments. This study examines EU foreign aid to its neighbourhood as a key site where geopoliticisation can be traced. It argues that EU aid has increasingly been reoriented through a security-connectivity nexus: on the one hand, aid is mobilised to strengthen neighbouring states’ capacity to manage security risks, institutional fragilities, border pressures, and hybrid threats; on the other, it is used to reshape energy, infrastructure, transport, digital, and economic linkages in strategically significant ways. The study adopts a mixed-methods design, combining qualitative analysis of European Neighbourhood Policy documents, progress reports, and related EU policy texts with quantitative examination of aid allocation data. The findings point to a gradual reorientation of EU neighbourhood aid, whereby security and connectivity concerns have become increasingly prominent alongside established developmental objectives. While this reorientation became visible before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the post-2022 context has accelerated and legitimised the use of aid as an instrument of strategic positioning in the EU’s neighbourhood.