The EU’s Hybrid Governmentalities: Enlargement Policy and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in the Western Balkans

Climate Policy in the Western Balkans has increasingly become a focus of different EU policies.

Both the Enlargement Policy and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) target the region’s climate policies, yet differ substantially in their approach. The way these policies interact and shape both concrete policy issues and the broader question of the Western Balkans’ integration into the EU offers broader insight into the nature of EU external action.

This article shows how potential contradictions between these policies emerge, but also how they are mediated in practice. To this end, it uses governmentality analysis to explore the underlying structures and logics they embody.

Based on its case studies, the article argues that the interaction between the policies’ governmentalities reveals a structural feature of EU external action: a hybrid governmentality, which turns contradictions into politically productive tension and enables their strategic use.