Narrow Focus, Broad Vision: A Strategic View of the Eastern Partnership (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Eastern Partnership, concluded between the European Union one the one side and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine on the other, has faced major challenges and yielded mixed results since its launch almost ten years ago. The EU's capacity to adapt to existing circumstances and learn from its experience will be key in promoting a more effective approach in the future. Despite progress in acknowledging the complexity of its Eastern neighbourhood and the gradual revision of its policy frameworks, the EU needs (1) to define better the differentiated goals it wants to achieve together with its Eastern partners; (2) to clarify its operational understanding of resilience; and (3) to approach the multiplication of cooperative orders in the Eurasian space more strategically. Also, lessons from the EU's more intense engagement in the Western Balkans could help avoid pitfalls across the EU's neighbourhoods.
The Eastern Partnership, Europe’s Eastern Neighborhood Policy
The aim of this paper is to define the framework and to explore the main objectives and key challenges of the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the EU’s Eastern Neighborhood Policy. To do so, the scope of our analysis will be delimited by focusing on the outlook and aspirations of the EU’s policy towards its eastern neighbors (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine). In addition to the description of the EaP’s rationale, the key issues of the (Eastern dimension) policy will be broached. The paper shows that, despite its relatively recent nature, the EaP has enhanced the role of the EU at the global level regarding foreign, security and defense policy. Nevertheless, the recent blows endured by the EU with the escalation of the current Ukrainian crisis and the still unsolved issues in the Eastern Neighborhood in matters of democracy, economy, governance... h!ave shown that progress remains to be made in improving the EaP. !
HARNESSING THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP: A WAY OUT FROM THE EAST EUROPEAN DEADLOCK?
On 7 May 2009, the EU summit with its Eastern European Partners (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, and Ukraine) in Prague launched the Eastern Partnership with a view to developing a specific Eastern European dimension of the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). However, this EU initiative has been perceived by Russia as a geopolitical process because, on the one hand, of the wide-ranging consequences of what the EU thought to be a purely technical, norms setting process of modernization, and, on the other hand, since it saw it as competing with the Eurasian Union project instrumented by Moscow in the former Soviet space. At present, the area from Vancouver to Vladivostok was hijacked by a new East-West geopolitical confrontation, while powerpolitik rather than cooperative security seems to prevail in shaping the future destiny of Eurasia. Apparently, the Eastern Partnership has been at the core of this dramatic change of the European and Euro-Atlantic security environment. However, other factors, such as the growing ideological gap between Russia and the West; and the chronic persistence of the protracted conflicts have also been at work in bringing up the collapse of the post-Cold War European security system . What role did the Eastern Partnership really play into this tragic evolution on the European continent? What lessons could the EU learn regarding its relations with the Eastern neighbors?
The aim of this article is analysis of the European Union’s new initiative directed to the Eastern neighbours known as the Eastern Partnership. Article shows: firstly Poland’s role in the creation the concept of Eastern Dimension of the European Union. Secondly, the European Neighbourhood Policy as a frame for the Eastern Partnership. Thirdly, key features and potential contribution of the Eastern Partnership and finally assessment and implementation of the Eastern Partnership initiative.
The Eastern Partnership: An Interim Step Towards Enlargement?
2009
In 2008 the EU`s relations with its neighbours were marked by a particular interest. After the re-launch of its relations to the south with the establishment of the Union for the Mediterranean, a new initiative for the east immediately followed: the Eastern Partnership. The Partnership aims to intensify the EU`s relations with three of its eastern and three of its south-eastern European neighbours. This ARI examines the most recent developments in the neighbourhood, with a special focus on the latest Commission`s Communication on the Eastern Partnership, and also provides a short overview of the initial Polish-Swedish proposal. It then evaluates the impact of the initiative on already existing EU-policies Enlargement and European Neighbourhood and discusses the possible future development of relations between the EU and its eastern neighbours participating in the Eastern Partnership.
EU – RUSSIA AND THE ENERGY DIMENSION OF THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP
The Energy Union Strategy, launched in February 2015, is a vast project aiming at identifying a set of common responses to a series of present and future challenges in the field of energy. The question of energy security occupies a central position in EU's relationships with its neighbours. In this context, economic and political ties with the Russian Federation in its role of major supplier of energy resources to EU member states are of crucial importance. Acquiring a higher degree of independence from the Russian supply of natural gas has been proclaimed as a national priority by several ex-Soviet republics. Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia have recently signed Association Agreements with the EU. We look into the early stages of the implementation of AA's and analyse their consequences on the EU – Russia relations in the energy field. A series of common characteristics and possible developments in the field of energy are analysed.
This article examines the discourse of the EU’s relations with eastern Europe under the recently launched Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative. First, it evaluates the EaP’s conceptual framework to suggest that there seems to be more continuity than change in the EU’s modus operandi with its neighbours. More crucially, the notion of ‘partnership’, central to the new philosophy of cooperation with the outsiders, continues to be ill defined, causing a number of problems for the effective and legitimate realisation of the European Neighbourhood Policy/Eastern Partnership in the region. Second, drawing on the empirical investigations of the official discourses in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, the article reveals an increasing gap between EU rhetoric and east European expectations. In the absence of adequate partnership response to the needs and interests of ‘the other’, the policy is unlikely to find anticipated legitimation in the neighbourhood.