M. Rabinovych. European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 28 (3 ), 2023.

The EU’s decision to grant Ukraine and Moldova a candidate country status and the recognition of Georgia’s European perspective in June 2022 has significant effects for both the EU’s enlargement and security and defence policies. So far, ‘hard’ security issues have played little role in the framing of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Association Agreements (AAs) with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Their full integration into EU security and defence arrangements will thus require considerable strategy-making and implementation efforts. This article discusses the extent to which existing external Differentiated Integration (DI) constellations can be seen as ‘building blocks’ for Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia’s prospective full integration into the EU’s security and defence architecture.

A. Vieira. Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol.59 (2), 2021.

The present contribution analyses the European neighbourhood policy and the Eastern Partnership (EaP), which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2019, from the perspective of social identity theory. It is argued that the evolution of both the European neighbourhood policy and the EaP corresponds to the emergence of a distinct EU identity: its ‘potential we’, which has been defying the Russian ‘significant we’ extended to the EaP states. Drawing on the framing analysis of strategic documents and statements, which identifies eight distinct themes, the contribution ascertains three different patterns of EaP states’ interaction with the EU: Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine accepting the ‘EU's potential we’, Armenia holding to the potential we, and Azerbaijan, as well as Belarus, contesting the potential we.

M. Mikalay, M. Neuman. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol.31 (3), 2023.

This paper traces the evolution of the European Union's (EU) and Russian Federation's discourse on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) along four frames - economic, (geo)political, normative, and security. We discover the dynamic of the EaP discourse in Brussels and Moscow, developing from an economic and political initiative to an adversarial security understanding, underpinned by logics of geopolitical and normative competition. With this study, we illuminate the misalignment of the EU and Russia's interpretations of neighbourhood policy and show how it underpinned mutual mistrust and the clash over the future of the region.

G. Carasso. Politique Etrangère, 3, 2021.

Les élites géorgiennes voient la Russie comme un ennemi qui, depuis la guerre de 2008, occupe une partie de leur pays. Pour faire face à cette menace, elles cherchent à renforcer sans cesse l’ancrage euro-atlantique de la Géorgie. La rationalité de cette posture victimaire mérite néanmoins d’être questionnée. Le pays gagnerait sans doute à développer une relation plus apaisée avec Moscou, tout en conservant des liens forts avec l’Occident

A. Buzogány. Problems of Post-communism, Vol.69 (4-5), 2022.

Civil society networks have received little attention when it comes to sectoral analysis of adaptation of EU rules beyond borders. This article offers a remedy by conceptualizing EU influence as an opportunity structure, a resource, and a discursive frame used by civil society organizations. Empirically, it describes how EU rules are used to support environmental reforms by civil society networks in Georgia and Ukraine. Civil society activism and mobilization can lead to high levels of policy approximation despite weak sectoral conditionality, entrenched domestic interests, and low public salience.

J.F. Crombois. European View, Vol.22 (1), 2023.

Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine calls into question the future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative on two levels. First, the war challenges the very geopolitical premise that underpins the Partnership. Second, the EU’s granting of candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova in June 2022, while postponing its decision on Georgia’s membership application, undermines the main rationale of the EaP: to keep the door to EU membership closed. This article argues that while the war in Ukraine may lead to a reshaping of the EaP, its fundamental features will remain for some time.