The promotion of good governance in its neighborhood has become one of the main pillars of the European Union’s foreign policy during the last decade. The European Security Strategy adopted in December 2003 explicitly mentions the need for the EU to support the development of good governance in its Eastern and Mediterranean neigh-bourhood (European Council 2003). This objective was reiterated by the Strategy Pa-per for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which points out that good gover-nance constitutes one of the areas of “mutual commitment” for the new partnership between Brussels and the countries in its Eastern and Southern vicinity (European Commission 2004a: 3). Consequently, the European Commission (EC) underlined this aspect in its proposal for the establishment of a new financing instrument - the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument - for projects in states included in the ENP (European Commission 2004b: 12).
