The European Political Community in the EU's wider neighbourhood: A new element of the differentiated pan Euro-Mediterranean integration framework

The contribution explores the implications of the creation of the European Political Community (EPC) and of its potential enlargement to the EU's Southern neighbourhood. After an overview of the federal roots of internal and external differentiated integration, and those of the EPC, the future of the pan Euro-Mediterranean economic integration will be tackled. Following this, the question of geopolitical divergence and convergence with the EU's neighbours shall be addressed. The potential institutionalisation of the EPC, in the light of the analysis of the four first summits held in 2022, 2023 and 2024, is taken into consideration in order to make proposals.Among the key recommendations are: the potential role of the EPC to better associate neighbouring countries with the EU's decision shaping; the possibility to use the EPC to modernise old association agreements and deepen regulatory convergence; the EPC could help to launch a reflection on a new European security architecture and on new provisions devoted to security in some association agreements; the EPC could reactivate the objective of a Euro-Mediterranean security Charter; the use of reinforced and enhanced cooperation, as well as PESCO, to deepen integration with third countries is also relevant, as is their association with EU CSDP missions and operations, which should be encouraged. The need for the EU to improve consistency when referring to different sets of values, and to continue to promote peace and democracy aspirations, as a universal value, in the pan-Euro-Mediterranean area is put forward.A proposal to amend and supplement Article 8 TEU is made at the end of the Article.