This volume offers a collective assessment of the development and impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership Initiative on its eastern neighbours - Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in particular, with Russia’s added perspective. Founded on extensive empirical and conceptual research, the volume uniquely bridges the perspectives of all parties across the EU’s eastern border, in an attempt to understand advantages and problems related to the effective implementation of the EU policies in the eastern region. The undertaken research points to the prevalence of the top-down and conditional governance approach in EU treatment of the outsiders, which is not only Eurocentric and prescriptive in nature, but also falls short of the declared partnership principles. Without the understanding of partners’ internal dilemmas and needs, which could only be achieved through the equivalence and reciprocity of partnership, the EU would struggle to make the policy effective and legitimate in the region, and to buttress its reputation as a ‘credible force for good’ on the international arena. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.

This volume offers a collective assessment of the development and impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy and the Eastern Partnership Initiative on its eastern neighbours - Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in particular, with Russia’s added perspective. Founded on extensive empirical and conceptual research, the volume uniquely bridges the perspectives of all parties across the EU’s eastern border, in an attempt to understand advantages and problems related to the effective implementation of the EU policies in the eastern region. The undertaken research points to the prevalence of the top-down and conditional governance approach in EU treatment of the outsiders, which is not only Eurocentric and prescriptive in nature, but also falls short of the declared partnership principles. Without the understanding of partners’ internal dilemmas and needs, which could only be achieved through the equivalence and reciprocity of partnership, the EU would struggle to make the policy effective and legitimate in the region, and to buttress its reputation as a ‘credible force for good’ on the international arena. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics.

This book explores the EU’s relations with its eastern neighbours. Based on extensive original research – including surveys, focus-groups, a study of school essays and in-depth interviews with key people in Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Russia and in Brussels – it assesses why the EU’s initiatives have received limited legitimacy in the neighbourhood. The European Neighbourhood Policy of 2004, and the subsequent Eastern Partnership of 2009 heralded a new form of relations with the EU’s neighbours – partnership based on joint ownership and shared values – which would complement if not entirely replace the EU’s traditional governance framework used for enlargement. These initiatives have, however, received a mixed response from the EU’s eastern neighbours. The book shows how the key elements of partnership have been forged mainly by the EU, rather than jointly, and examines the idea and application of external governance, and how this has been over-prescriptive and confusing.

This book offers a legal analysis of the European Neighbourhood Policy (the ENP) as it applies to developing relations with the EU's neighbours. It explores the legal aspects of this policy, including ENP competence matters, institutional arrangements and substantive policy issues, using international relations theory as the starting point in defining the EU's role as a political actor. The book focuses on the adequacy of the ENP legal framework for transposing the EU's democratic values and upholding its political image. In this connection, the book also features an analysis of EU democratic values as they are intended to be understood by its neighbours. The relevant legal framework of this policy and its implementation in the states of the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) is evaluated, revealing the effects of the ENP in their democratic processes and the shortfalls of the ENP conditionality.

This volume is timely in that it explores key issues which are currently at the forefront of the EU’s relations with its eastern neighbours. It considers the impact of a more assertive Russia, the significance of Turkey, the limitations of the Eastern Partnership with Belarus and Moldova, the position of a Ukraine in crisis and pulled between Russia and the EU, security and democracy in the South Caucasus. It looks at the contested nature of European identity in areas such as the Balkans. In addition it looks at ways in which the EU’s interests and values can be tested in sectors such as trade and migration. The interplay between values, identity and interests and their effect on the interpretation of europeanisation between the EU and its neighbours is a core theme of the volume.

This book arrives at a very significant time throughout Europe. Not only is the European Union currently facing a prolonged economic and social crisis, with nascent political consequences, such as the ascension of populist parties in the 2014 European elections, but also its Eastern neighbourhood is confronted with the growing hostility of an assertive Russia, opposing any new advance of the West towards its frontiers. Bringing together experts in fields such as international relations, political science, political sociology, diplomacy, security studies, and European studies, with robust academic and professional backgrounds and expertise with regard to the region, this volume explores this significant “window of opportunity”, and will undoubtedly appeal to a global audience. The considerable diversity of approaches and styles here allows a multidimensional diagnosis and analysis of present-day Eastern Europe. This volume defines a series of major regional opportunities, vulnerabilities and dilemmas, and explores the complex perspectives of the “new Eastern Europe”, located between the European Union and Russia, under its current name of the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood, along with the tensions and challenges of a possible second Cold War.

Recent events in Ukraine and Russia and the subsequent incorporation of Crimea into the Russian state, with the support of some circles of inhabitants of the peninsula, have shown that the desire of people to belong to the Western part of Europe should not automatically be assumed. Discussing different perceptions of the Ukrainian-Russian war in neighbouring countries, this book offers an analysis of the conflicts and issues connected with the shifting of the border regions of Russia and Ukraine to show how ’material’ and ’psychological’ borders are never completely stable ideas. The contributors – historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists from across Europe – use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to explore the different national and transnational perceptions of a possible future role for Russia.