The project investigates the effectiveness of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and the newly launched Eastern Partnership (EaP) in three east European countries – Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Russia is also included into research, as a greater geopolitical neighbour, affecting the EU’s relations with Eastern Europe (EE).

In our research we comprehensively combine both the EU’s and the EE’s perspectives, and include the whole range of methods in order to achieve a better understanding of the success and limitations of the ENP/EaP. We undertook a range of interviews with European officials in Brussels and Strasburg (Commission, Parliament and Member States’ permanent representations) and examined EU official documents and published data. To complement this, we also collected afresh nation-wide surveys, expert interviews, focus-groups and school essay in the four east European Countries, to gain intimate knowledge of the process and problems related to legitimising the ENP/EaP in the region.

The project is organised in cooperation with partners in EE: Centre for Political Research, Belarusian State University; Centre for Sociological Research, Moscow State University; Independent Sociological Research Centre in Moldova and SOCIS Centre for Social and Political Research in Ukraine. It is funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for 2008-10 (RES-061-25-0001). Additional funding is Aberystwyth University “Research Support Grant”.