ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores policy implementation in the field and highlights several tensions undermining the EU's attempt to export its norms. It analyses the consistency between current EU policies in the post-Soviet area, understood as the extent to which various EU policies within a given geographical framework are compatible with one another. The political and economic conditions linked to EU cooperation aid, contractual relations and trade policy are defined in the framework of the regional approach proposed by the European Commission in 1997. The analysis of connections between the EU's integration process/internal policy and external policies such as the ENP also led other scholars to favour an analytical framework based upon the external governance approach which seeks to grasp the way in which the EU expands its rules abroad.
