A Missing Eastern Dimension? The ENP and Region-Building in the Post-Soviet Area

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, the encouragement of regional co-operation and integration has ranked high among the European Union’s foreign policy priorities. While a significant share of European Community external assistance funds is earmarked to regional cooperation projects, region-building lies at the core of key EU-pushed initiatives, the most famous being the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. However, even though the academic literature on the ENP is blooming, little attention has been paid to the articulation of bilateral and regional dimensions in the relationship with Eastern neighbours. Through examining the EU’s record in region-building its Eastern neighbourhood, this chapter intends to question the emergence of an EU regional vision in the Eastern part of the continent and to shed light on the extent to which such a vision is underpinned by ENP instruments and methods. In doing so, it will highlight tensions related to two issues, which will ultimately determine the EU’s influence in its neighbourhood: inclusiveness, defined as the EU’s ability to include partner countries’ preferences in its policies and to promote their participation ; and consistency , understood as the extent to which various EU policies are compatible with one another, for the purpose of this chapter within a given geographical framework.