ABSTRACT
In 2016, Russia's Valdai Club published a report titled 'Russia and the European Union: Three Questions on New Principles of Relationship' with the main idea being that Russia should refuse integration with the EU. Russia and the European Union are two of the major powers in Europe, but due to a combination of two factors, geographical proximity and strategic economic interdependence, the relations between the rising European Union and the rising Russia are very different from those between other 'rising powers'. The EU's attempt to establish (weak) authority relations with Russia in the '90s failed, and in the 15 subsequent years a relationship was formed that rested on the distancing of both parties and the separation of the political and economic elements of cooperation. As Kahneman and Tversky stated, when actions can produce either gains or losses, and the probabilities of both outcomes are either unknown or equal, loss aversion produces a phenomenon known as the status quo bias.
