Authors

Florence Ertel¹; Julian Plottka¹;  ¹ University of Passau, Germany

Discussion

The Russian War of aggression against Ukraine is changing the geopolitical environment in the post-soviet space. This confronts the European Unions’ foreign policy with a variety of challenges. In addition to the fundamental question of which role CSDP will play in the future, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)- especially the Eastern Neighbourhood - is moving into the spotlight and current developments lead to a need of reconsideration. The Eastern Partnership has always been the EU’s main instrument to establish closer relations with countries in its Eastern neighbourhood. With the exception of Belarus – which’s membership is suspended - the war in Ukraine strengthened Eastern European states’ orientation towards the EU. However, the question arises if the framework is still suitable or rather dysfunctional with only two remaining countries Armenia and Azerbaijan as the EU granted Moldova and Ukraine a membership perspective in 2022 – which means that these countries will move to EU enlargement policy - and Georgia, that could follow soon. Therefore, our paper focusses on the current institutional setup of the EU foreign policy towards its Eastern neighbours by analysing how the EU Enlargement Policy and the ENP work together in this new framework – especially with regard to the military dimension of the ENP. We will focus on what the EU can offer to its neighbours and analyse if there is a window of opportunity for enhancing the EU’s role in the post-soviet space.