ABSTRACT
Introduction: The Setting The Black Sea region is a space where the ‘normative power Europe’ concept introduced by Manners and by extension its impact on the Union’s ability to conduct its ‘soft power’ foreign policy such as the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the Black Sea Synergy and the Eastern Partnership (EaP), is being challenged by the offensive realism of Russia as the events in Ukraine unfold.1 In other words, what Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeir refer to as ‘governance by conditionality’, albeit in a weakened form when it comes to the countries of the Union’s Eastern neighbourhood, is now confronted by a revisionist Russia which seeks to challenge what it perceives to be the status quo-the power of the ideational-cultural aspects of European foreign policy with its emphasis on, inter alia, interests, values, norms, principles, customs and institutions as manifested through its various policies q
towards its neighbours.2 It is a space where the transformative power of the Union finds its limits. To paraphrase Ivan Krastev, it is also a space where weak states weakly connected to weak societies abound.3 The Black Sea region is thus a space of growing uncertainty, replete with paradoxes, competing visions and growing expectations within which the European Union (EU) finds itself especially challenged for a number of reasons that will be elaborated below.
