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EURINT 2016 Editura.Pdf Gabriela Carmen PASCARIU | Teodor Lucian MOGA | Loredana Maria SIMIONOV (editors) THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP UNDER STRAIN ___________________________________________ Time for a rethink? EURINT 2016 This volume was published with the European Commission support. "The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsi-ble for any use which may be made of the information contained therein." Coperta: Manuela OBOROCEANU Tehnoredactor: Ciprian ALUPULUI ISBN 978-606-714-311-9 ISSN 2393-2384 ISSN-L 2392-8867 © Editura Universităţii „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, 2016 700109 – Iaşi, str. Pinului, nr. 1A, tel. /fax: (0232) 314947 http://www. editura.uaic.ro, e-mail: [email protected] Gabriela Carmen PASCARIU | Teodor Lucian MOGA | Loredana Maria SIMIONOV (editors) THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP UNDER STRAIN ____________________________________ Time for a rethink? EURINT 2016 EURINT CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS May 20-21, 2016 EDITURA UNIVERSITĂŢII „ALEXANDRU IOAN CUZA” IAŞI 2016 CONTENT FOREWORD 7 EUROPEAN UNION STRATEGIC NARRATIVE TOWARDS THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION’S ESCALATION: STOP, SLOW OR GO? 9 Nikita LOBANOV RUSSIA’S POST-CRIMEA LEGITIMIZATION DISCOURSE AND ITS CHALLENGES FOR THE EAP COUNTRIES 27 Vasile ROTARU THE RUSSIAN REVISIONISM AND THE FATE OF THE EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY 45 David MATSABERIDZE THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE ‘NEW WAR’ FROM ITS EASTERN BORDERS 54 Miruna TRONCOTĂ THE EU DEMOCRACY PROMOTION UNDER SCRUTINY: THE DOUBLE STANDARDS IN THE CASE OF BELARUS AND AZERBAIJAN 79 Ewa ŻUKOWSKA DE FACTO STATES IN THE EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD: BETWEEN RUSSIAN DOMINATION AND EUROPEAN (DIS)ENGAGEMENT. THE CASE OF ABKHAZIA 96 Sebastian RELITZ NATURAL RESOURCES AS POWER INCREASNG CAPABILITIES AFFECTING THE POLARITY OF THE BLACK SEA REGIONAL SYSTEM 114 Oana-Ancuța POIANĂ THE ATTITUDES TOWARDS EUROPEAN INTEGRATION IN EASTERN PARTNERSHIP STATES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 131 ELITES’ COMMITMENT FOR FURTHER ENGAGEMENT Armen GRIGORYAN ASSESSING NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE IN THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES 149 Constantin-Marius APOSTOAIE ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE EU’S EAP COUNTRIES: DETERMINANTS AND PROSPECTS 169 Ilkhom SHARIPOV EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY AND FDI: EASTERN DIMENSION 188 Krzysztof FALKOWSKI, Joanna STRYJEK GROWING REGIONAL SCIENTIFIC MIGRATION AND MOBILITY: THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP 210 Ganna KHARLAMOVA, Maksim SITNITSKIY TOWARDS THE MORPHOLOGY OF CREATIVE BUSINESS- MODEL IN UKRAINE 235 Alexander KLIMCHUK, Veronika CHALA GETTING CLOSER TO EU STANDARDS - GEORGIA FISCAL GOVERNANCE ADJUSTMENT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 253 David OBOLADZE FOREWORD The European Union (EU) has always sought to have strong political and economic ties with the post-Soviet region following the principle that a safer EU able to grow inside but also to assume in a responsible manner the role of a regional and international player is firstly obliged to put its near abroad in order. However, the ongoing turmoil from Ukraine is seriously testing the EU’s capacity to effectively stand up to the current regional challenges. It is perhaps not surprising that in many political and academic circles the EU’s approach towards the Eastern Partnership (EaP) region is perceived today as being not entirely comprehensive. The EU seems not fully capable of delivering meaningful results which could negatively impact, on the long-run, the EU’s credentials in the region. Concurrently, in post-Soviet Eastern Europe the EU has still not been able to fully accommodate the large spectrum of expectations stemming from the EaP states, instead vacillating in its discourse between exclusion and inclusion, between limited vs. potential full integration, move which has puzzled many of its observers. Last but not least, the pressing security concerns from the EaP region having the Ukrainian crisis as centrepiece are still unsettled which could damage the EU’s presence in the neighbourhood as an important player for the near future. Hence, we believe time is ripe for a detailed reconsideration of the EU’s neighbourhood instruments. In our view, a lack of in-depth inquiry into the factors at play might irreversibly undermine the EU’s role in the region. The 2016 edition of EURINT Proceedings premised on a selection of contributions for the EURINT 2016 International Conference “The Eastern Partnership under strain – time for a rethink?” seeks to fill in a visible gap in the literature on the conceptualization of the EaP and, thus, provide novel answers and raise awareness of the intrinsic and extrinsic challenges the EU faces in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. The present volume is a timely and important contribution to the field of European Studies, since it combines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, insights from the fields of International Relations, Political Science, Economics, etc. As such, it aims at assessing the implications of the latest political events from the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood (i.e. the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Donbas) by trying to answer some critical questions from a threefold perspective – theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented. Particularly, what impact the unfolding Ukrainian crisis could have on the EU’s actions and instruments in the neighbourhood in the long run? Is the EU’s ‘soft power’ approach towards its Eastern neighbourhood still effective today when confronted with a revival of Realist consideration and Cold War type-rivalries? Is the Eastern Partnership still a suitable political framework for reaching out to the post-Soviet Eastern European states? By arguing that the latest political developments have brought a new ‘era’ in the cooperation between the EU and the Eastern neighbourhood, this volume 8 | explores novel ways of conceptualizing and explaining the institutional effects and actor behaviour when analysing the challenges to the EU’s transformative power. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in EU external relations, EU foreign policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership. The publication of this volume was co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme within the frame of Jean Monnet Project “The Eastern Partnership under strain - time for a rethink?” (EaPpeal), 2015-2016. This support does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflects the views only of the authors. The Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Editorial team EUROPEAN UNION STRATEGIC NARRATIVE TOWARDS THE EASTERN PARTNERSHIP COUNTRIES AND THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION’S ESCALATION: STOP, SLOW OR GO? Nikita LOBANOV* Abstract: The narrative dimension of the EaP programme was considered by the European policy makers of secondary relevance as it was focused on the bureaucratic aspects of the economic and judicial convergence of the target countries with the European Union through “regulation setting”. The importance of these aspects has clearly increased after the Russian Federation used hybrid war tactics in Ukraine since 2013 based on a fabricated Strategic Narrative that relied on the “Reflexive Control” and “Informational Warfare” principles to a great effect. The growingly opposing information spheres, the Russian and the European, have an enormous importance for the political discourse in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. By drawing on a closer examination of a number of primary and secondary sources – including important events, official texts, and excerpts from interviews – this paper aims at comprehending the formation, projection and reception in the EaP states of the Strategic Narratives of the Russian Federation and the European Union since 2013. Keywords: European Union; Russian Federation, Eastern Partnership, Strategic Narratives, Information Sphere Introduction Communication is more and more at the centre of the international scene. The constant evolution of the new media channels (i.e. the development of social networks) affects policies and their outcome. In fact, “definitions of policy problems usually have narrative structure; namely, they are stories with a beginning, middle, and an end, involving some change or transformation. They have heroes and villains and innocent victims, and they pit forces of evil against forces of good” (Stone, 2002, p. 138). The Eastern Partnership (EaP) region, its people, elite and civil society, are caught in-between. * MA II Year Student, Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES), University of Bologna: Campus Forli, e-mail: [email protected] 10 | EUROPEAN UNION STRATEGIC NARRATIVE TOWARDS THE EP COUNTRIES The European and Russian Strategic Narratives are increasingly in contrast. The struggle of identities is transforming into an irreconcilable confrontation that European policy-makers, scholars and civil society have to address. After the Russian ‘middle class’ protests of 2011 and the Arab Spring events in the same year, the Russian Federation’s policy-making elite perceives any change in the ‘near abroad’ as a direct threat to Russian sovereignty. In fact, “Kremlin’s policies towards the post-Soviet space range somewhere between domestic and foreign policy; they can be regarded as an extension of domestic politics” (Adomeit, 2011, p. 25). The Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008, the ‘hybrid war’ enacted to seize Crimea in 2014 and the creation
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