Paper Titles & Abstracts

Besides the weaknesses of the Eastern Partnership initiative itself (among them the lack of real incentive of EU membership) and different problems in doing the 'homework' on side of the Eastern Partners, the latter face a challenging integration dilemma as well. They are forced to choose between Russia and the EU. While this choice, often considered to be a political one, seems to be easier for some EaPs (like Georgia), it creates problems for other EaPs (like Ukraine) with serious short, medium or long term economic consequences. After a short period of co-operative approach at the beginning of the 2000s, the EU and Russia evidently got involved into a competition over their common post-Soviet neighbours. The EU launched its Eastern Partnership initiative in 2009 covering the three post-Soviet 'common neighbours' and the three South-Caucasian states with the offer of 'deep and comprehensive free trade agreements' as a core element. On its side, Russia also initiated an ambitious integration project in the post-Soviet space, starting with the Customs Union within the Eurasian Economic Community in 2010 and with the final goal of an Eurasian Economic Union. An evident struggle for Ukraine has been evolving for the past few years. The paper will go into details on concrete issues and developments of foreign economic relations between the EU and EaPs on the one hand, and Russia and EaPs on the other with the aim of analysing recent and actual economic importance of each gravity centres. Trade, FDI and migration flows and tendencies are to be studied in order to evaluating prospects of economic integration initiatives with this or that partner. The paper also intends to look at possible co-operative or competing scenarios between the analysed two actors and to identify their clashing and/or coinciding interests.