Eastern policy of the EU: strategy for Ukraine
Eastern policy of the EU: strategy for Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: All instruments of Eastern policy have proved to be ineffective, because from the very start it was not intended to promote cooperation with partner countries to membership perspective. Thus, the mechanism of interaction very soon ceased to be an efficient tool of EU foreign policy in the region. Besides, it did not consider the Russian factor, whose destructive impact on the post-Soviet space is hard to overestimate. As a result of such lopsided approach a specific buffer area has appeared that is staying in close cooperation with the European Union without the chance to become its part. The region consists of semi-integrated states rupturing between the processes of cooperation with the EU and involvement in regional alliances and associations, which often contradict to each other. Combined with Russia's imperial ambitions we have a status quo that generates geopolitical uncertainty in the region and indeed creates a zone of permanent instability along the borders of the EU. The author believes that the events of 2013-14 in Ukraine's initiated a new stage in the EU's eastern policy, which is characterized by the acute necessity of a total revision of its own goals, means and formats. The new Eastern policy of EU should envisage the prospect of transforming the entire post-Soviet region.

• Details
• Contents