This chapter argues that even though the resources and instruments of the European Union (EU) do not always correspond to what is expected from it, the Union nonetheless might prove a useful tool in helping to bring about reform towards more democratic and free societies in the Black Sea region. The chapter looks at both the flaws of the EU’s Black Sea policy (mainly compartmentalization and the inability to pursue strategic interest) and the opportunities presented by new efforts such as the Eastern Partnership (EaP) to establish grounds for cooperation between the EU and non-EU regional and local authorities, as well as civil society.
The Black Sea has often been labelled a playground of geopolitical competition where Russia, the US and the EU are the main actors that struggle for leadership (see Chapter 4). Whilst there are many divergent agendas in the region at the moment, in the long term this should not be interpreted as a clash of interests. In the end, and although this does not seem to be the agenda of some elites currently in power, the adoption of a social model or model of governance that will be a driving force towards prosperity, freedom and rule of law, is in the interest of the people living in the region.
The two social or governance projects competing in the region since the end of the Cold War have been that of the EU and that of the Russian Federation, projects with different standards of governance and different appeals to their neighbourhood (Duleba and Hirman 1999; McFaul, Petrov and Rybakov 2004; Neumann 2007; Torbakov and Kononenko 2009). The EU project, though suffering from several flaws, might be the one with the most to offer. This assumption is based firstly on the comparison between the EU and Russia, especially when it comes to civil liberties, standards of governance and the state of the economy. Secondly, in the past, especially on the way to the 2004 enlargement, the Union is believed to have contributed greatly to reform in the aspirant states. The EU is still seen as a ‘transformative power’ (Grabbe 2006) or a ‘normative power’ (Manners 2002) despite the fact that it cannot deliver as much as expected (Hill 1993).
The wider Black Sea states (especially the six non-EU states that joined the Eastern Partnership) are considered to be ‘aspirant states’ within this chapter, that is states in which at least part of the elite (whether government, opposition or civil society) would like to see their respective countries as full EU members. The success of the EU’s efforts in the Black Sea is however, among other factors, related to whether the Union wins trust and manages to engage all the relevant players, including Russia. At the same time, as will be explained later, the pro-democracy processes taking place in the region should not be termed narrowly as ‘an EU project’ since, apart from the EU’s inspiration and support, a wide array of local actors is also driving them forwards.
This chapter looks at EU policy in the Black Sea region and shows on the one hand its flaws such as the lack of coordination of policies towards the region (mainly enlargement policy towards Turkey, neighbourhood policies towards its Eastern neighbours and policy towards Russia) and the institutional set-up of decision-making that prevents the implementation of its strategic interest (for example, blocked accession negotiations with Turkey due to resistance of certain member states to see this country as a member), and on the other hand the EU tools that might in fact be bringing results. Two new instruments currently being launched under the Eastern Partnership Initiative will be looked at in particular. These are the Eastern Europe and South Caucasus Local and Regional Assembly and the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the need for further research into the issue of how the EU and its policies are perceived in the region and what the local/regional actors in fact expect from the Union.
The EU’s policy in the East, although ‘clumsy’, has great potential. The EU struggles to be efficient without having one single, united voice. Whilst some member states are willing to put long term EU interests before the short term interests of their own governments, other members are reluctant to do so. This could possibly change in the longer term now the Treaty of Lisbon has been fully ratified. At the same time, the Union sometimes uses the method of trial and error in its search for proper tools to address seemingly clearly defined problems.
The very appeal of the EU’s social project incorporating political freedoms and democratic institutions, good governance and high living standards, that some have termed the ‘European Dream’ (Rifkin 2004) is likely to help it to turn Black Sea competition into cooperation. This potential can however be diminished or developed depending on strategic planning and overcoming the compartmentalization of policies by following up on declarations and supporting plans with resources. The Eastern Partnership is an opportunity for achieving progress in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood, or ‘wider Black Sea region’ (a less EU-centric label). This is the first time we have witnessed the Union dedicating particular attention to the creation of a multi-level process of exchange with aspirant countries. The relations are no longer a rhetorical exercise between the EU institutions and governments in the partner countries, who are not always acting for the benefit of their people; now a wider scope of actors has been invited to take part.
Finally, this chapter questions the emphasis on the EU as the main active player in the possible reform of the neighbourhood and suggests scholarly interest should turn more towards debating the role of actors from the region in bringing about change. This aspect is considerably understudied and the lack of data only reifies the not-so-grounded claim that the Union has been the chief driver of reform. Further research thus needs to be carried out to see what the people and elites in the region in fact expect from the EU and what their own capacities are for bringing about reforms in their respective countries.
The chapter draws on The Research Centre of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association’s research in this area (2008 and 2009), EU documents, and numerous interviews conducted with representatives of EU institutions, EU member states and Black Sea states, most of whom spoke on condition of non-disclosure of identity. To preserve their anonymity the interviews will not be attributed.
The discussion about the EU’s opportunities and limits as an international player has been a long and rich one and it is beyond the ambition of this chapter to review all its key turning points, not to mention nuances. The ambition here is more modest, to contribute a small fragment to the literature which is particularly relevant for the EU’s efforts in the East: that which discusses the capability expectation gap and the EU’s civilian/normative power (Duchene 1972, 1973; Bull 1982; Hill 1993; Manners 2002).
The gap can be summed up as the difference between the EU’s ‘ability to agree resources and instruments’ and the expectations that exist both inside and outside of the Union (Hill 1993: 315). As Hill suggested in the time when the EU’s external policy was only in its kindergarten years, to overcome the gap ‘either capabilities will have to be increased or expectations decreased’ (Hill 1993: 321). Despite this gap seeming to be something inherent in the EU’s nature and structure, the Union, working jointly with like minded partners, has a capacity to deliver on some of its interests. It is not probable that this gap will cease to exist and neither can the expectations of both active insiders and aspirant outsiders be diminished simply by stating ‘this is what we can and this is what we cannot do’. As the debate on the EU’s international presence developed, it turned out that as long as the Union remained an inspiration for its less democratic or worse governed outsiders, it would go against its own interests if it refused to act in support of processes that might in the end contribute to its own security and in the long term to cutting its spending on external aid.
A contribution, that to a certain extent bridges the capability expectation dilemma, has been Manners’s (2002) widely discussed reinvention of Duchene’s idea of ‘Europe as a civilian power’. Using a case study of the EU’s efforts to abolish the death penalty worldwide, Manners concludes:
[T]he EU [is] constructed on a normative basis … this predisposes it to act in a normative way in world politics. It is built on the crucial and usually overlooked observation that the most important factor shaping the international role of the EU is not what it does or what it says, but what it is (Manners 2002: 253).
This observation on the one hand suggests that foreign policy and external relations begin at home, since it is the EU’s domestic governance that makes it attractive and likeable, whilst on the other hand, it raises questions such as, ‘Do we know enough about what the “EU is” for non-EU citizens?’ This applies in particular to the aspirant ones. A solid knowledge of the answer to this question would not only help in understanding the workings of the EU better, it would also be a good basis for the formulation of more efficient policies. At the same time it needs to be noted that studies of EU politics do share an emphasis on the active role of the EU. Whether it is questioned or praised, the EU as the active force is the centre of attention. On the one hand, this might be natural if we are talking about ‘EU studies’, whilst on the other hand, we might need to start learning more about the Union through the perspectives of outsiders aspiring to become insiders. The scholarship on what the EU meant and did for central and east European (CEE) countries, from which research on the European neighbourhood has often drawn, has sometimes overlooked the capacity of the aspirant states, calling them ‘supplicants’ (Hill 1993: 315) or portraying them as objects of external workings: ‘[T]he Western community of states socializes the former Communist states’ (Schimmelfennig 2000: 1). In search of an understanding of the EU’s role, the ‘West’ has often been homogenized as the active and the ‘East’ as the passive. The diversity of actors in each imagined ‘camp’ and the potential of the East’s contribution to its own development have thus been downplayed. Even if the EU institutions and member states have not so far learned the lesson that such thinking in fact obscures our ability to see important phenomena, academics should. Years after the CEE states joined the EU, academia has dedicated only a little attention to the role of domestic actors in bringing about change. For example Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2007) note that the Europeanization process could also, to a certain extent, be explained by the roles played by domestic actors and factors in ‘Europeanized’ countries but does not dedicate more attention to this idea.
We are already beyond the debate about whether the EU is or is not an actor and whether it does or does not have a ‘presence’ (Ginsberg 1999). The question now is whether it can be an actor able to achieve its interests and whether it can do this alone or only in cooperation with likeminded partners in the regions of interest to the EU. The evidence presented in the following sections suggests that while the Union’s performance in the Black Sea region is limited by its flaws (mainly in its ability to agree on and develop proper instruments), at the same time the EU is certainly equipped to assist the process by which the norms and standards exercised in the EU gain more resonance in its neighbourhood. So far it seems that while the EU has been clumsy in its approach, it possesses a number of resources that make it appealing. In turn, this appeal may as well help the Union to maintain its attraction until it becomes more efficient.
Although the European Union began trying to develop a complex approach to its eastern neighbourhood much later than to its southern neighbours, the east presents a greater potential for success. This is for one simple reason: in the east eventual EU membership is not out of the question in the way it seems to be in the south (for example, in 1987 Morocco’s application for European Community membership was turned down on the grounds that it was not a European state). Yet it seems the Union is not always the eastern neighbourhood’s best friend since it overlooks the interconnectedness of some processes and it does not always show institutional learning. Three flaws that could be mentioned are: 1) the suspension of negotiations with Turkey and limited cooperation with this country on the EU’s Black Sea policy, 2) insufficient correction of mistakes from the ENP in the Eastern Partnership, and 3) the lack of a regional format for debate with all eastern partners. These are discussed below.
Firstly, the accession negotiations with Turkey could have been one of the EU’s most powerful Black Sea tools. Several chapters were suspended soon after the opening of the negotiations, as a result of Turkey’s refusal to accept EU terms when it comes to the dispute over Cyprus. In 2004 the Union welcomed a divided island as a member and since then the burden of conflict resolution has been put largely on the shoulders of Turkey. At the same time, for many Turkophobes and proponents of the EU as a Christian project, the Cyprus dispute seems to be a good pretext for not letting Turkey into the Union. This is an example not only of the lack of strategic vision of certain member states’ leaders but also of something institutionally inherent in the EU: there is no instrument to ‘force’ a consensus upon the member states (Tocci 2004; Akgun et al. 2005; Najšlová 2007). While the Lisbon Treaty with its institutional reshuffling certainly has the potential to contribute to a more informed and coordinated policy making, the issue of Turkish membership has proved to be very divisive on the highest political level in certain member states and it is unlikely that the Lisbon Treaty will help to overcome this in the foreseeable future.
The EU documents (for example, European Commission 2004a; European Council 2004) suggest that Turkey is indeed important for the implementation of many of the EU’s foreign and security policy goals. Think tanks seem to be unanimous in stating that Turkey should be a member of the EU. Many of the reasons for this are related to the Black Sea region including that Turkey was the initiator of post-Cold War consensus in the Black Sea region, and together with Russia it established BSEC (Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation). When the EU came up with the Black Sea Synergy in 2007, it did not seem to care too much about getting Turkey and Russia on board and consequently, they were both reserved in their comments on the initiative. In the end, the Black Sea Synergy seems now to be almost dead, as the regional dimension of EaP seems to be developing more (EU interview 2009). Turkey at the same time is one of the most important keys to unlocking the South Caucasus conflicts (see Section 2) and has shown its determination to do so by announcing the South Caucasus Cooperation and Stability Platform and more concretely with efforts to normalize relations with Armenia. The EU’s recent reaction to Turkey’s efforts in the Black Sea and its potential for contributing to the EU’s own policies has again been a mild one. The Prague declaration adopted in June 2009 at the launch of the Eastern Partnership under the Czech presidency states:
Third states will be eligible for the participation on a case-by-case basis in concrete projects, activities and meetings of thematic platforms, where it contributes to the objectives of particular activities and the general objectives of the Eastern Partnership (Joint Declaration 2009).
Thus Turkey, despite its presence and activity in the Black Sea region, has received exactly the same status as any other third country wishing to cooperate with the EU and its Black Sea partners. Moreover, it has been suggested by some EU policy makers that were interviewed that Cyprus in particular is not interested in seeing Turkey cooperating too much on EU initiatives.
Apart from the negotiations with Turkey, another problem with the EU’s eastern policy is the fact that the Union has not shown enough ‘institutional learning’ and not all aspects that were evaluated as problematic after a few years of the ENP were ‘repaired’ in the Eastern Partnership. An example of this is the lack of a regular mechanism for monitoring the implementation of the policy or even a clear consensus between the Commission and the national governments about exactly what should be counted as progress in the concrete tasks of the Action Plans (Duleba et al. 2008).
As suggested in earlier research (Duleba et al. 2008, 2009), the new formula of neighbourhood policy proposed by the Finnish and German EU presidencies in 2006 and 2007 to the neighbours willing and ready to go beyond Action Plans (the original instruments of the ENP) was a ‘contractual sectoral relationship based on two fundamental principles – obligatory approximation to the respective EU sectoral acquis and the access to the EU sectoral programmes and institutions’. The EU has offered new formats for its interaction with neighbours: participation in the Community programmes, access to the Community agencies, and the possibility of concluding sectoral agreements. The last one of these is the first tool ever establishing a binding relationship between the EU and a neighbourhood partner country. However, implementation is less clear than the offer on paper: in certain policies, with some countries the dialogue is going to be based on sectoral agreements (for example in the field of energy and air cargo services), whilst with other countries only a thematic dialogue will be in place. It does not seem that the EU will be able to make the best of new sectoral instruments for achieving the declared goals of the EU policy towards its eastern neighbours at any time in the near future (Duleba et al. 2008, 2009).
Finally, EU policy towards the east is still compartmentalized and there has been no forum in which the neighbourhood policy, enlargement policy and relations with Russia could be discussed at the same time. Currently EU diplomacy is more often submerged in details of particular policies and what is often lacking is the complex picture and a complex approach. The neighbourhood policy and enlargement policy have been discussed in different fora in the EU so when it comes to the Black Sea region, this could account for the lack of strategic vision. Again, while the Lisbon Treaty brings institutional amendments that can be implemented almost immediately, a deeper shift in perceptions, such as Turkey’s strategic value, might not come so quickly.
It is thus obvious, that there is not a single clear vision of how to make the eastern policy work and how to engage all partners. Still, despite the clumsiness, the EU cannot for the most part be denied its good intentions.
Two of the EU’s new efforts vis-à-vis the east could serve as an illustration of aspects that make the EU attractive: the ‘Local and Regional Assembly’ and the ‘Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum’ (see below). Both are part of the attempt to transform the EU East cooperation into a multilevel process, based on the conviction that change will not happen only as a consequence of elite political agreements but is more likely to be transferred through exchanges between a multitude of actors on the lower levels of governance and the non-state level. Working via state structures does not seem to be the only effective method of conducting foreign policy any more or of achieving external relations goals (Nye 2008). This attempt, the creation of the fora, could be termed the Union’s ‘normative effort’ in progress. Again, one should be careful in attributing too much of a role to the EU as the driving force. Perhaps the concept of the EU as a ‘tool’ could be more appropriate, since the idea of the ‘EU as an inspiration’ is being used and referred to by both the EU and aspirant EU actors.
In April 2009 the Committee of the Regions (CoR) adopted an opinion in which it welcomed the Eastern Partnership and suggested the creation of an ‘Eastern Europe and South Caucasus Local and Regional Assembly’ as a ‘short term objective’ (Committee of the Regions 2009a). The main objection that could be raised with regard to such a forum is the fact that EU member states’ local and regional authorities have a substantial degree of autonomy whereas this is not the case with the non-EU participants of the Eastern Partnership (Duleba and Gross 2009). As noted by a senior EU member state policy maker who used to be involved in public administration reform, there is a risk that the forum could turn into a series of useless coffee meetings (EU interview 2009).
On the other hand, the mere creation of such an assembly could be an achievement in itself, as it would involve more stakeholders in the process of making norms and standards adopted in the EU member states resonate more strongly in the non-EU partner countries. While it is too early to make predictions about the contributions of this forum, a lesson can be drawn from a comparable case. In evaluating the EU’s role in the facilitation of change in Slovakia before accession, one observer remarked that in the beginning they thought it was just wasted ‘sandwich and coffee money’ but that after a couple of years they saw that the biggest EU contribution was the creation of a forum, which helped them to highlight certain issues, though they were probably not aware of it at the time (interview 2008).
However, the process of creating the new assembly was stalled. In December 2008, there was a unanimous consensus among relevant EU policy makers that regional and local assemblies were desirable and important, yet full advantage was not taken of the window of opportunity presented by the Czech presidency in the first half of 2009. A clear and strong political commitment followed by action was lacking; the main proponents of the EU’s active approach to the east were not unified enough and they did not lobby enough (EU interview 2009).
Another explanation, according to some EU sources, is the pressure of the EU southern states giving precedence to the EU’s efforts in the Mediterranean neighbourhood. The process of the creation of the Eastern Assembly somehow got tied to the Euro-Mediterranean assembly. In November 2008, the Euro-Mediterranean ministers of foreign affairs endorsed the Committee of the Regions’ proposal for the establishment of a Euro-Mediterranean Regional and Local Assembly (Committee of the Regions 2008) but the forum was still not established at the end of 2009. Should the EaP assembly continue to move at this tempo, it would not be formally established until 2011.
Finally, the core of the problem does not just lie in the EU institutions but also at home in the member states. The regional authorities in many (especially post-2004) member states are under funded and do not have enough staff for lobbying and involvement in political affairs. Also, they do not have enough resources for offering their own development/democratization assistance. In Spain for example, the regions are a relatively strong partner when it comes to provision of aid and assistance; 15 per cent of Spain’s development aid has been provided by regions and municipalities (Manglano 2009). This is not the case with the strongest proponents of EaP, the Central European countries. So, decentralization has some limits in the EU as well. The whole process is still being developed though and perhaps the forging of external relations might as well be a useful exercise for fixing things at home in the EU. We should be aware of the tough consequences of ‘not being close to citizens’ evidenced by the low turnout in the European Parliament elections in 2009 and the fact that values deemed ‘a matter of course’ in Brussels (for example diversity is good, racism is not) haven’t yet reached many EU citizens. Thus it is essential that the EU follows up on the declaration of multilevel ties with its neighbours. Otherwise it will be bringing to the neighbourhood not only its virtues but its weaknesses as well.
Even though the assembly itself had not yet been formally established at the beginning of 2010, a number of events had already taken place under the umbrella of the CoR. These were events in which representatives of regional authorities both from the EU and the eastern partners took part. Though it is difficult to measure their direct impact, the forum for debate, though unfinished and with a lot of deficiencies, already exists and an exchange is taking place.
The story of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (CSF) is a more optimistic one as it has already been launched. In June 2009 the European Commission invited civil society organizations from the EU member states, eastern partners and third countries to express their interest in being part of the CSF (European Commission 2009d). By September 2009 it had received 439 expressions of interest, the majority (317) being from organizations based in eastern partner countries (European Commission 2009e). The selection committee then had to cut down these numbers to a final 220 (European Commission 2009f) which was a task of Solomon given the fact that, in its invitation for expression of interest, the Commission asked only for a few lines about the organization applying and did not even request a list of projects implemented by these organizations.
While it seems clear that such a forum could not function very efficiently if it was composed of everyone who expressed interest (especially should the rules of inclusiveness and transparency dictate that new organizations could join in after the establishment of the forum), the decision to select some and refuse others was politically very sensitive, as it may have quickly created enemies among those who were refused membership.
Having national ‘elections’ of representatives to CSF was indeed an option considered initially by the Commission but was in the end refused as ‘not a practicable solution’ (European Commission 2009a). The Commission, in an effort to keep the process of forming the forum transparent, in March–April 2009 requested comments from civil society. It is however telling that only 40 contributions were received (European Commission 2009a). Considering the emphasis on ‘civil society cooperation’ one can find in almost every article or policy brief on the EU’s eastern policy, this amount of contributions is surprisingly small. While a number of factors could be mentioned to explain this, there is little reason to believe that this lack of interest was caused by the widespread belief of civil society that the Commission would get it right by itself.
Staying with the figures a bit, it is also interesting to look at the number of organizations applying from the eastern states: while from Azerbaijan with a population of 8 million, 69 organizations applied, and from Belarus with a population of about 10 million, 76 organizations applied, from Ukraine with a population of 46 million ‘only’ 62 applied (European Commission 2009e). While these figures might be interpreted in various ways, the relatively low number of Ukrainian civil society organizations is in line with the general perception in Ukraine, as interviews with local civil society representatives suggest, that Ukraine does not have much to gain from the Eastern Partnership.
On 16–17 November 2009, the forum was launched with 220 organizations invited. Though the Commission stressed the principle of ‘transparency’ in almost every document related to the forum, in the end it decided not to make public the list of selected organizations (European Commission 2009e) and the lists of participants were available only to the participants of the forum. To be fair it needs to be added that the main reason for not publishing the list of those invited was a ‘security concern’: some non-EU governments might have had trouble letting representatives of their civil society leave the country to attend the forum.
The working groups of the forum, each focused on one of the thematic priorities of the Eastern Partnership (democracy; economic integration; energy security; and people to people contacts as outlined in Chapter 1), produced a huge number of recommendations on what the Civil Society Forum should be dealing with (Eastern Partnership Forum 2009a, 2009b, 2009c and 2009d). Some of these wide ranging recommendations could also serve as a basis for reform in some EU member states.
Some issues still remain to be solved especially procedural ones: for example is the membership in the CSF a given ‘forever’? Or will we see elections and a change of members? On the initiative of civil society representatives, a fifth working group was formed at the forum that explored the issues of governance and the composition of the forum. One observer noted that the process went much further than the Commission expected. The most important question of course remains whether the forum will be a ‘paper tiger’ producing tons of recommendations, that will be posted on the EU website and will be used mainly as study material for researchers, or whether it will be a real partner, allowed to contribute to the formulation and evaluation of the EU’s policies.
The crucial point is that the majority of people in the working groups are representatives of non-EU member states and although the process is facilitated by the Commission, the establishment of the forum itself was to a large extent the result of voices from the region calling for more inclusion into the debate on their countries’ possible EU future. The presence and involvement of non-EU actors mean that the Union cannot be understood to be the centre of events any more, or the sole active force. Nor can the democratization of the neighbourhood be considered to be solely an EU project. There are voices in the region which do not need to be told what to do, but rather need the EU to listen and to assist in their efforts to make their governments responsive to public demands.
It needs to be added though, that the role of civil society in international relations is considerably understudied (Götz 2008) and the common assumption (especially in think tank publications) of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) being a ‘force for good’ is untested. While civil society is increasingly becoming a partner for governments in various spheres of public life, we do not know much about its real contribution. While we might assume that ‘more heads will bring more wisdom’ or that NGOs are a watchdog, it is still at a level of assumptions and more research is required in this field, especially when discussing civil society defined in broad terms (which is the case of this forum) such as businesses, business associations or also NGOs from countries where the state exercises severe control over public life. The credentials of some of these organizations might well be questioned.
To sum up, whilst the EU is clumsy in its approach and sometimes unable to make internal agreements or pursue its interests, at the same time, it is an attractive entity. It has made an offer, though only a modest one so far, to share its accomplishments, support the pro-reform players in its neighbourhood and engage them into the debate on how to make their countries better governed places. The pro-reform players in the aspirant states do not see the European Union only as a model to be emulated or learned from but also as a tool to be used to achieve change in their respective countries. In the end, though the Union’s flaws cannot be ignored, neither can the opportunities it represents. If the voice of the pragmatic idealists in the Union become amplified and if they manage to accept as genuine partners those outside of the EU who are working towards similar goals, then the project of making the Black Sea region a better governed, more free and more prosperous place is likely to succeed.
Firstly, it seems that the EU’s inability to find a common position on strategic issues such as the Turkish accession will not cease even now the Lisbon Treaty is in force. The choice of relatively low profile figures for the first President of the European Council and the first High Representative for Foreign Affairs, not to mention that the chosen president is known for his unfavourable attitude to Turkey’s EU membership, have shown, that the Union is likely to continue in its old ways: member states will play a key role in foreign policy and since their leaders change in office every four to five years, they will not always speak the same language and not always see the same ‘long term goals’. In spite of this, the forces attaching the neighbourhood closer to the Union are already at work: both from inside the EU and from inside the Black Sea region.
Secondly, non-state actors might well become more relevant players in bringing about reform in the Black Sea states, inspired by the EU. Non-EU civil society actors tend to view the EU as an ally in their effort to achieve better standards of governance (Andretta and Doerr 2007).
Lastly, much research on what the EU does and what the EU means has been carried out by looking at EU actors and scrutinizing EU policies, but not much is known about the responses from the EU’s outsiders, especially those aspiring for membership. Unless more research is carried out in this field, we might be running around in circles whilst debating what the EU can and cannot provide and what is expected from it. Questioning the common notion of the EU being the main active force might throw more light onto this debate. Though some literature has appeared in recent years on how the EU is perceived in the world (for example Lucarelli 2007; Lucarelli and Fioramonti 2009) not much research has been done on the perceptions of the Union’s most direct neighbours or ‘aspirant’ states and non-state actors in these states. Such research is necessary in order to be more acquainted with the expectations of the aspirants but also because it might prove to be a useful grounding for getting the EU’s message across better.
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1 I thank Alexander Duleba, under whose guidance I conducted earlier research on the EU’s Eastern policy, for his valuable remarks and contributions on an earlier version of this chapter.