Eu Eastern Neighborhood

This edited volume brings together some of the most important scholarly perspectives – in the form of both journal article reprints and original contributions – on the structure and dynamics of the EU’s multi-layered relations with its Eastern neighbours within the Eastern Partnership (EaP) framework and beyond. In May 2019, the EU’s EaP – an ambitious and sophisticated policy framework, conjoining elements of cooperation and integration, with the EU’s six eastern neighbours, i.e. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – turned ten years. This anniversary, in conjunction with repeatedly voiced critique by scholars and policy-makers alike regarding the framework’s effectiveness and utility, led the EU to submit the EaP to a fundamental auditing and revision. Structured around both enduring and emerging issues in the broader EU-Eastern neighbourhood framework, this book provides a retrospective analysis of key structural and relational challenges, unfolding regional dynamics, distinctive forms of bilateral/multilateral engagement, whilst also offering a critical perspective on the contested future relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours. Looking backwards and providing a critical and thorough assessment of the first ten years of the EaP in practice, this book thinks forward and gauges its many potential future avenues. This comes at a crucial moment, as the EU and its six Eastern neighbours are in search of new and mutually acceptable forms of association.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has had profound and long-lasting impacts on the societies of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, impacts which are not yet fully worked through: changes in state-society relations, a comprehensive reconfiguration of political, economic and social ties, the resurgence of regional conflicts "frozen" during the Soviet period, and new migration patterns both towards Russia and the European Union. At the same time the EU has emerged as an important player in the region, formulating its European Neighbourhood Policy, and engaging neighbouring states in a process of cross-border regional co-operation. This book explores a wide range of complex and contested questions related to borders, security and migration in the emerging "European Neighbourhood" which includes countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as the countries which immediately border the EU. Issues discussed include new forms of regional and cross-border co-operation, new patterns of migration, and the potential role of the EU as a stabilizing external force.

Based on the diverging interests of Germany and Poland as influential members of the European Union on the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the contributions in the anthology analyse specifics and current problems of the states in EU’s Eastern neighbourhood. By including the interests of Russia and the USA, which go beyond the EU, the geostrategic implications of these relations for the Eurasian region will also be highlighted. The studies of renowned German and Polish experts represent the results of individual research and bilateral exchange on the current state of EU’s relations towards its Eastern neighbours.

The EU continuously searches for more effective policy towards its eastern neighbourhood, which is reflected in the on-going adaptation of its existing approaches, discourses and policy strategies to the new challenges of its external environment. In order to understand the complexity and limitations of the EU framework under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership Initiative (EaP) – that is, to consider the interface between policy instruments, institutional structures, and multiple agents – one needs to adopt an original analytical perspective of practices to comprehensively assess the policies’ outcomes. This volume therefore offers an examination of social practices as implemented through the use of policy instruments and subsequently embedded into the existing/emergent social structures which shape and determine the EU-neighbours’ relations. To gauge success of the ENP in the eastern region, the manuscript pulls together a rich collection of geographical and thematic case-studies, joined by the overarching conceptual framework of practices. This study’s principal aims are to discern patterns of social practices which guide agents’ interactions in different policy areas; to explore the origin and effect of these practices (the role of dominant discourses, logistical imbalances, deliberate strategies, etc.); and to explicate the nature of the emerging social structures being established in the eastern region. This approach is distinctive from other constructivist undertakings as it allows to synergise the meanings of social actions (through the focus on agents and instruments), and their structural extensions (through the focus on emergent structures) across geo- and bio-political localities of the EU and its eastern neighbourhood. This book was published a sa special issue of East European Politics.

The selected papers in this volume were prepared under the research project on “EU Eastern Neighborhood: Economic Potential and Future Development (ENEPO)” funded by the EU Sixth Framework Program. They discuss the broad spectrum of development issues in the EU Eastern Neighborhood and economic relations between the enlarged EU and its Eastern neighbors in the former USSR. Individual chapters address areas of economic and social development, trade, energy, investment, migration, costs and benefits of economic reforms, development assistance and political economy of policy reforms. In particular, they examine interrelations and mutual synergies between trade liberalization, inflow of foreign investment, economic and institutional reforms and a reduction of income and development disparities. The publication thus closes an important knowledge gap in respect to the economic, social and institutional development of the CIS region and its economic relations with the EU.

Contributors offer new approaches to the study of the European Neighbourhood Policy. While the main emphasis is on the empirical assessment of the impact that the ENP has had to-date and on the factors that have shaped its implementation, it also provides new theoretical and methodological perspectives on how to study this policy area.

This book explores the ways in which differences in interests, values and identity between the European Union (EU) and its eastern neighbours affect relations between them. Most studies of the EU's relations with its eastern neighbours concentrate on the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in terms of norm and rule transfer. This volume takes a multidimensional approach. In particular it explores the concept of Europeanisation and sees how the interplay of different factors--identity, geopolitics, domestic political and economic interests as well as history--affect the interpretation of the concept in the eastern neighbourhood. This ultimately can support or limit the impact of the EU's influence. The volume also goes beyond the members of the ENP to include countries such as Turkey and Russia, for which Europe and Europeanisation play an important part in politics and identity, even if contested and not EU-focused. The volume is timely and relevant for students in its coverage of key issues which dominate the agenda of EU external relations: migration, security, Russia's power, the significance of Turkey, Ukraine between East and West, and divisions in the EU itself. The aim is to be multi-disciplinary and widely accessible rather than theory-heavy. Contributions also include scholars from across the region covered--back cover.