Paper Titles & Abstracts

The EU proclaimed the ambition of fostering change in Eastern Europe, and researchers follow its performance closely. The mainstream scholarship on the subject rests on two assumptions - that coherence across EU external policies is possible and necessary - and assesses EU performance to date as a failure. To the contrary, this study questions the strong positive connotation associated with coherence and looks for the parameters of the possible. Examining EU rule of law promotion in Ukraine as an instance of EU value promotion in the non-accession context, the paper argues that differentiation lies at the core of the EU approach and EU policy is a product of multiple interaction effects in the process of its formulation. The analysis reveals exactly how the interaction between actors and institutional contexts in the EU and Ukraine mediates EU rule of law promotion policy towards Ukraine by constraining and/or facilitating a certain conception of the rule of law (including both its political prioritisation and practical substantiation). I conclude that the current EU approach to value promotion in Eastern Europe is the only reasonable approach in the given political context and can be seen even as ambitious for its reliance on values' end-goals. The proposed perspective on the EU engagement in third states - with the ideas of process and interaction at the core - diverts the way we understand EU activities and assess their success. The analysis draws on the theoretical and thinking tools of historical institutionalism and relies on extensive document analysis and empirical findings from around 60 expert interviews conducted in Kyiv, Brussels and Strasbourg throughout 2010-2012.