Bilateral Relations with Russia and the Impact on EU Policy: The Cases of Cyprus and Greece

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how two EU Member States, Greece and Cyprus, have influenced the evolution of common EU positions on Russia. Moreover, it exposes how the policies and positions taken up by Greece and Cyprus inside the EU have either undermined or reinforced a common European approach towards Russia across different policy themes.

Keywords:

• bilateral
• multilateral
• cooperation
• EU
• Europeanisation

Notes

¹ Primary material for the first phase of this research was collected mainly through formal interviews and informal conversations with Greek, Cypriot and Russian diplomats in Brussels in June/July 2010.

² I say general because of course there are exceptions to this ‘general’ trend. There are examples where Greece has clearly not aligned itself to the EU position or succumbed to EU pressure to reach agreement or compromise on an issue (the issue of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)), because of bureaucratic and domestic political reasons (see Agnantopoulos, 2010, pp. 12–13).

³ See Stephanou (2010) for an overview of Greece's foreign policy.

⁴ See Cutler (1985) for an analysis of Soviet Union policy in the 1974 Cyprus conflict.

⁵ I stipulate two years because Cypriot representatives that I talked to in Brussels only took up their posts in 2009.

⁶ Confirmed by telephone interview with Cypriot official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cyprus, July 2010.