Piret Ehin is Research Associate at the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute and Senior Researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Tartu in Estonia.

Graham Avery is Senior Member of St. Antony’s College, Oxford University and former Director for Strategy, Coordination and Analysis in the European Commission’s Directorate General for External Relations

Executive summary

With the formulation of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the European Union (EU) has become an increasingly important player in a region that Russia regards as its ‘near-abroad’. While both Russia and the EU seek to position themselves as regional actors, there are important differences in their approaches towards their neighbours:

• The EU’s main goal is to stabilize its periphery whereas Russia wants to maintain its ability to control developments in the post-Soviet space.

• The EU conceives of its neighbourhood in terms of regional policies and institutionalized cooperation, whereas Russia tends to interpret developments in the region through the lens of ‘great power’ geopolitics.

• The EU considers democratization in the neighbourhood to be a precondition for security and stability, whereas Russia regards democratic neighbours as a threat to its own increasingly authoritarian regime.

• While the EU’s policy in its neighbourhood is based on positive conditionality, Russian policy relies more on sanctions and threats.

• The EU considers that solutions to ‘frozen conflicts’ must respect the territorial integrity of the countries involved (Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan) while Russia supports secessionist entities. (This problem is related to the solution of the status of Kosovo, which Russia considers as a precedent applicable to conflicts in the post-Soviet space, an interpretation rejected by the EU).

• The EU’s interest is to diversify its energy supplies by building oil and gas pipelines bypassing Russian territory, while Russia’s interest is to control the key transit routes for its energy supplies to the EU and the post-Soviet states.

Russia’s policies in the neighbourhood have been increasingly coercive and largely counterproductive, alienating neighbours and pushing them to seek closer ties with the EU and NATO. However, Russia still has the potential to exercise influence over the region’s states, including those that have declared their interest in Euro-Atlantic integration. Due to domestic divisions and instability, the ‘European choice’ of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia remains inherently fragile, and can be undermined by Russia’s economic and political pressure.

Despite Russia’s inclination to view relations in the neighbourhood as a zero-sum game, the EU should refrain from defining the situation in terms of a strategic competition. It should remain focused on the core mission of the ENP - the promotion of reforms, support for democratization and stabilization – and allocate increased resources to the policy to ensure its effectiveness. A reinforced ENP should offer stronger incentives to the Eastern ENP countries for their European choice of democratization, stabilization and modernization. By helping the EU’s Eastern neighbours strengthen their institutions, diversify energy supply and develop effective instruments for regional cooperation, a reinforced ENP will also reduce their susceptibility to negative Russian pressure.


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