EU Policies in the Eastern Neighbourhood: The practices perspective

The EU continuously searches for more effective policy towards its eastern neighbourhood, which is reflected in the on-going adaptation of its existing approaches, discourses and policy strategies to the new challenges of its external environment. In order to understand the complexity and limitations of the EU framework under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the Eastern Partnership Initiative (EaP) – that is, to consider the interface between policy instruments, institutional structures, and multiple agents – one needs to adopt an original analytical perspective of practices to comprehensively assess the policies’ outcomes.

This volume therefore offers an examination of social practices as implemented through the use of policy instruments and subsequently embedded into the existing/emergent social structures which shape and determine the EU-neighbours’ relations. To gauge success of the ENP in the eastern region, the manuscript pulls together a rich collection of geographical and thematic case-studies, joined by the overarching conceptual framework of practices. This study’s principal aims are to discern patterns of social practices which guide agents’ interactions in different policy areas; to explore the origin and effect of these practices (the role of dominant discourses, logistical imbalances, deliberate strategies, etc.); and to explicate the nature of the emerging social structures being established in the eastern region. This approach is distinctive from other constructivist undertakings as it allows to synergise the meanings of social actions (through the focus on agents and instruments), and their structural extensions (through the focus on emergent structures) across geo- and bio-political localities of the EU and its eastern neighbourhood.

This book was published as a special issue of East European Politics.

Elena Korosteleva is Professor of International Politics, and Director (Professional Studies) of the Global Europe Centre, University of Kent. She is the author and editor of a number of books and special issues, with the focus on democratisation and EU foreign policies. Her recent work, The EU and its Eastern Neighbours: towards a more ambitious partnership? (Routledge 2012) is a result of her large ESRC-funded project 'Europeanising or Securitising the Outsiders? Assessing the EU's partnership-building approach with Eastern Europe' (RES-061-25-0001).

Dr Michal Natorski is Senior Research Fellow at the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair, College of Europe, Natolin Campus. His articles were published in Journal of European Public Policy, Cooperation and Conflict, East European Politics, Journal of Contemporary European Research, European Political Economy Review, and Journal of Constitutional Law in Eastern and Central Europe. His research focuses on various aspects of EU foreign policy.

Dr Licínia Simão is Assistant Professor in International Relations at the School of Economics, University of Coimbra. Her main research interests include foreign policy analysis, and security studies, with a focus on European foreign policy and the former-Soviet space (Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia). She has published widely on these topics including on Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics, and the Journal of Contemporary European Studies.