New Publication! |Cybersecurity at the Borders: The EU’s Differentiated Approaches to Cyber Capacity Building in Its Neighbours
New Article on the EU’s Cyber Capacity Building in Its Neighbourhood
Published in the European Foreign Affairs Review, the article compares how the EU uses cyber cooperation with the Southern Neighbourhood, the Eastern Neighbourhood and the Western Balkans to pursue its strategic and geopolitical interests.
The article “Cybersecurity at the Borders: The EU’s Differentiated Approaches to Cyber Capacity Building in Its Neighbours”, by Carlos Fonseca-Diaz and Mauro Santaniello, has been published in European Foreign Affairs Review, Volume 31, Issue 2 (2026).
Drawing on a comparative analysis of Cyber Capacity Building (CCB) projects funded by the EU and its Member States, the study identifies three differentiated “scripts” in cyber cooperation: law enforcement, governance and resilience.
Abstract
Cyber Capacity Building (CCB) has become a key instrument in the external dimension of the European Union (EU) cybersecurity policies. This paper examines how the EU operationalizes its strategic and geopolitical interests through cyber cooperation with three key neighbouring regions: the Southern Neighbourhood (SN), the Eastern Neighbourhood (EN), and the Western Balkans (WB). Drawing on a comparative analysis of CCB projects funded by the EU and its Member States, the study identifies three differentiated scripts in cyber cooperation: law enforcement, governance, and resilience. The paper argues that the EU’s approach to CCB is strategically instrumentalized and differentiated to reflect broader geopolitical, security, and integration objectives, ranging from stabilizing border regions and managing external threats to extending its regulatory influence. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the EU’s evolving ambition to act as a geopolitical and normative actor in global cybersecurity governance, and they underscore how differentiated regional engagement reflects the EU’s strategic priorities in the digital age.
Cyber cooperation as a geopolitical instrument
The paper argues that the EU’s approach to CCB is strategically instrumentalised and differentiated to reflect broader geopolitical, security and integration objectives – from stabilising border regions and managing external threats to extending its regulatory influence.
The findings contribute to a better understanding of the EU’s evolving ambition to act as a geopolitical and normative actor in global cybersecurity governance.
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