Adjusting the EU’S Geopolitical Posture in the Eastern Neighborhood
Adjusting the EU’S Geopolitical Posture in the Eastern Neighborhood

Summary/Abstract: The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has signaled the end of cooperative security, and the shift to a new stage of evolution of the European system. This new stage seems to be defined by a geopolitical confrontation between the West and Russia, which seems to reshape the relations within todays’ Europe. In June 2016, the EU Global Strategy suggested that Europeans must be able to protect Europe, respond to external crises, and assist in developing partners’ security and defence capacities. It also referred to European security and defence efforts which should enable the EU to act autonomously, while also contributing to, and undertaking actions in, cooperation with NATO. The Eastern Partnership was supposed to advance regional cooperation but, so far, it has done little to do so. According to the lessons learned in the Balkans in the first decade of the 2000’s, this approach should change on a medium to the long term, as necessary and possible, if the EU was to capitalize on the benefits of regional cooperation through increasing the synergies of its own policies with regional initiatives. A reshaping of existing EU policy instruments with greater concerted emphasis on the Baltic and Black Sea regionalisms will be critical, at that stage.

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