The European Union is facing a geopolitical awakening in its Eastern Neighbourhood. Despite the previous adjustments to the 2004 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2011 and the recalibrations of the emphasis on resilience following the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU’s approach to its neighbourhood appears outdated in the current geopolitical context. The region’s heterogeneity questions past approaches designed according to a logic of geopolitical linearity and predictability. The 2022 Russian aggression against Ukraine made it evident that warfare would no longer be conducted with limited goals. European institutions should adapt to these new realities and adjust their approach if the EU wants to continue shaping its Eastern Neighbourhood. As part of the adaptation process, Brussels needs to reassess the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the only Eastern dimension of EU foreign policy.
Rethinking the EU’s Eastern Partnership: Three Ways to Upgrade Amid Geopolitical Competition
The review of the EaP can take three distinct paths, outlined in this policy paper:
1) a geopolitical platform, integrated into the framework of the European Political Community (EPC) (a geopolitical EaP);
2) a programme with limited scope, designed for civil society, youth, local government authorities, and businesses
(a low-profile EaP);
and 3) a purely technical and pragmatic platform, geographically expanded to include Central Asia (a pragmatic EaP).
Whatever version of reformatting the EaP the EU chooses must align with its strategic objectives, operational resources, and existing geopolitical constraints. Strategically, the EU’s interest in the EaP stems from security needs, and if this is left unaddressed, Eastern Europe will remain a source of instability. Operationally, the EU must allocate sufficient political, financial, and institutional resources to accommodate the preferred future format of the functioning of the EaP. The EU also needs to set ambitious yet realistic goals within the EaP and outside its current geopolitical paradigm to reach out to neighbouring ecosystems through EU-external strategies, such as the Global Gateway platform targeted at Central Asia.
Read the full publication here.
Associate Expert at the GSSC and Research Fellow and PhD student at the Institute of Political Science at the Justus Lybig University of Giessen, Germany, researching global governance and the resilience of countries in the EU neighbourhood. He has published extensively between 2015 and 2021 on European integration, EU-Russia interaction, good governance and energy security in Eastern Europe. Mr Cenusa is also an Associate Expert at the Moldova think tank Expert-Grup, where since 2015 he has been coordinating a SIDA-funded joint project with the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels on Sakartvel, Moldova and Ukraine.
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