This book examines the feasibility, content and likely economic impact of a free trade agreement between the European Union and Ukraine. The authors find that a simple and shallow free trade agreement, adding only the elimination of tariffs on trade in goods to the conditions for Ukraine's accession to the WTO, is the most easily feasible option, but would yield only modest benefits for Ukraine and less still for the EU. By contrast, they argue that a deep free trade agreement with the EU, while posing more difficult issues of feasibility, could be a centerpiece of an economic strategy leading Ukraine into rapid growth. Politically, this step would be consistent with Ukraine's European choice and would also be of value to the EU economy in meeting the challenges of globalization and Asian competition. Contributors include T. Huw Edwards (Loughborough University), Ildar Gazizullin, Vira Nanivska, and Olga Shumylo (International Centre for Policy Studies, Kyiv), Daniel Müller-Jentsch (European Commission/World Bank Office for South-East Europe), Matthias Lücke (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), Valeriy Pyatnytskiy (First Deputy Minister of Economy and European Integration, Ukraine), Andreas Schneider (CEPS), Rainer Schweickert (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), and Olexandr Shevtsov (United Nations Development Program, Ukraine).

In The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, Guillaume Van der Loo provides the first comprehensive legal analysis of this complex and controversial international agreement. While key political and legal hurdles towards the signing and conclusion of this agreement are analysed, its scope and contents are scrutinised and contrasted to other international agreements concluded by the EU. Specific attention is devoted to the ambitious “deep and comprehensive free trade area” and the unique provisions related to Ukraine’s approximation to the EU acquis. In particular, this book explores to what extent the agreement can be considered a new legal instrument for ‘EU integration without membership’.

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).

Relations between the EU and Russia have been traditionally and predominantly studied from a one-sided power perspective, in which interests and capabilities are taken for granted. This book presents a new approach to EU-Russia relations by focusing on the role of images and perceptions, which can be major obstacles to the enhancement of relations between both actors. By looking at how these images feature on both sides (EU and Russia), on different levels (bilateral, regional, multilateral) and in different policy fields (energy, minorities, regional integration, multilateral institutions), the book seeks to reintroduce a degree of sophistication into EU-Russia studies and provide a more complete overview of different dimensions of EU-Russia relations than any book has done to date. Taking social constructivist and transnational approaches, interests and power are not seen as objectively given, but as socially mediated and imbued by identities. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European Foreign Policy, Eastern Partnership, Russian Foreign Policy and more broadly to European and EU Politics/Studies, Russian studies, and International Relations.

The year 2007 will mark the tenth anniversary of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Russia. At their Sochi summit in May 2006, the two parties agreed to work towards a new agreement to replace the PCA. This book explores whether the EU and Russia could make a better job of their strained relationship, which, while peaceful, is nevertheless characterised by mounting grumbles on both sides over how to govern oil and gas trade and investment, through to issues of democratic values and divergent approaches to such countries as Georgia and Ukraine in their overlapping neighbourhoods.

Richard Youngs is the director of Fride, Madrid, and an associate professor at the University of Warwick. He has authored five books, including Europe㠒ole in Global Politics: A Retreat from Liberal Internationalism --Book Jacket.

This book addresses the complex origins of the Ukrainian crisis. It places the crisis in a longer-term perspective and shows how the domestic political regime interpreted, balanced and eventually chose between the competing integration offers of Russia and the EU. It also explores the key implications for Ukraine's relations with the EU and Russia.