ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to take stock of the existing constructivist research on EU-Russia relations and to suggest some avenues for further research. It focuses on the structuralist approach by interpreting the identities of the actors as deriving from their relationship. In the post-Cold War European context, controlling the meaning of the universal norm is usually associated with the concept of Normative Power Europe (NPE), a unique feature of the EU. In the post-Crimea environment, in particular, Europe is blamed for allowing euthanasia and promoting feminism, legalising same-sex marriages and everything else that Russian conservatives detest. Russia's economic dependence on the global capitalist core created the preconditions for what was in effect a European colonisation of the country. Russia's endeavour to stage a counter-hegemonic rebellion on an intra-European platform was doomed from the outset. 'Sovereign democracy' had no chance exactly because it reproduced the same pattern of normative dependence on the EU and the West with challenging Western hegemony.
