The national specialization index in foreign policy of the member states of the European Union as a contribution to the European Neighbourhood Policy. An introduction to the notion

The European Neighbourhood Policy as a constituent part of the European Common Foreign and Security Policy is the arena of continuous, inherent as it were, tensions among the ambitions of Member States wanting to play the largest role in the shaping of the European Union’s relationships with the surrounding world. A characteristic and obvious quality of this phenomenon is the fact that particular Member States’ interests in a given region in the neighbourhood of the European Union increases in proportion to its geographical proximity. This creates naturally the phenomenon of a group of Member States interested or specialized in the region of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea or the Eastern policy. Simultaneously there exists a considerable group of Member States which, because of a considerable distance from a particular region, shows little interest and consequently a frequent lack of understanding of issues related to it. The objective of this article is to capture this phenomenon and to try to systemize it through the notion and methodology of the National Specialization Index.