ABSTRACT
In 2013, Croatia’s accession to the European Union (EU) marked a further success for the Union’s external policy, whereas Armenia’s abrupt retreat from closer integration with the EU by refusing to initial the negotiated Association Agreement, including and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), cast doubt on the Union’s leverage. These events happened in two regions that are comparable in the sense that they have similar histories of communist domination, albeit diverging in terms of centre–periphery relations, as well as ethnic and religious diversity. There has been a prevalent assumption that the EU’s ‘success story’ in the Western Balkans can be transferred to the South Caucasian countries in terms of fostering prosperity, facilitating democratic governance and ensuring the settlement of conflicts, thereby transforming them from the inside out. Armenia’s U-turn in foreign policy after more than three years of negotiations produced a ‘cold shower’ effect, testifying to differences between the two regions and the ‘texture’ within them. 2 This makes it essential to analyse, not only the rationale, the objectives and the means of the EU’s policy towards the Western Balkans and the South Caucasus, but also the responses of the latter.
