Dealing with the elephant in the room: the EU, its ‘Eastern neighbourhood’ and Russia

ABSTRACT

The article seeks to advance the understanding of the shifting European Union (EU)-Russia interaction in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus by exploring both the EU’s policies and responses to Russia’s initiatives in the region. Drawing on different strands of literature (regionalism, international relations and EU foreign policy analysis), it identifies three scope conditions under which to expect EU policies to influence the interaction with Russia in the shared neighbourhood: the degree of integration offered to post-Soviet countries as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP); the extent to which the EU seeks to link Russia with the ENP/EaP; and the degree of internal coherence on the EU’s interaction with Russia. The article argues that all three conditions have contributed to shaping interaction with Russia, albeit to different degrees. It is primarily the EU’s new role of a region-builder as part of the EaP that triggered Russia’s counter-actions, thereby resulting in a growing competition for influence in what has become a contested neighbourhood.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union
• Russia
• European neighbourhood policy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the editors of the special issue, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Laure Delcour is a Research Fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (France) and a visiting professor at the College of Europe. She has extensively published on the diffusion and reception of EU norms and policies as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, as well as region-building processes in Eurasia. She has recently authored The EU and Russia in their “Contested Neighbourhood: Multiple External Influences, Policy Transfer and Domestic Change, London: Routledge, 2017.

ORCID

Laure Delcour http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4753-7027

Notes

1 In 2003, the EU and Russia agreed to launch four Common Spaces (among which one on external security) with a view to expanding their partnership. In 2005, they adopted four Road Maps specifying the agenda for each of the Common Spaces.

2 See for instance ‘Eastern Partnership’ on the website of the Office of the State Minister of Georgia on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, http://www.eu-nato.gov.ge/en/eu/eastern-partnership (accessed December 2016).

3 Emphasis in the original text.

4 These include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine (European Commission, 2008, p. 2).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Horizon 2020 Framework Programme: [grant number 693382].