General Outline

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. In the light of a growing tension between "Europeanisation" and "Securitisation" we posited the questions:

  • How are "Europeanisation" and "Securitisation" defined in the key ENP documents?
  • Is there a growing tension between the aims and the means of these discourses?
  • To what extent do these discourses correspond to those adopted in Eastern Europe (EE)?
  • What implications may the tension have on achieving stability, security and well-being in the wider Europe?

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’s 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.

Our research of the existing EU practices in Eastern Europe has so far revealed two-level tensions.

  1. First, from the examination of official documents, elite interviews and public surveys across the EU border, it has transpired that conceptually the EU has limited uniform awareness of what it is trying to promote in its eastern neighbourhood under the aegis of 'shared values', 'collective norms' and 'joint ownership'. Not only is there a discrepancy in the EU's own rhetoric – juxtaposing its 'universalist' values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law (Europeanisation), with its 'realist' security ‘needs’ to protect its borders and safeguard its own citizenry (securitisation); there is also an evident clash of the EU's vision of good governance with what the neighbours perceive to be such, stemming from their own unique historical experiences and cultural traditions.
  2. Second, empirically, the EU seems to favour a 'top-down' governance approach (based on rule/norm transfer and conditionality) in its relations with outsiders, which is clearly at odds with a voluntary idea of 'partnership', and explicitly limits the input of 'the other' in the process of reform. In the absence of a workable notion of partnership, external governance (unintentionally) circumscribes the EU's actions to the EU-centred vision of governance, without necessarily connecting it to the 'visions' and 'needs' of the partner states. Consequently, without the substantive knowledge of its partners, the EU encounters protraction even from the most 'enthusiastic' neighbours, such as Moldova and Ukraine; and resistance from those who are not sufficiently motivated by the 'universal' appeal of EU governance.