ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way the European Union (EU) has been portrayed as a normative power in its relations with its eastern neighbors. It highlights the discrepancies between the Union's highly normative rhetoric and its external action in the Black Sea region. Normative narratives of EU foreign policy claim that the EU is in a higher degree a product of the interactions between various principles, norms, values, and institutional designs within it. The chapter discusses three main policy areas are the enlargement policy of the EU, the European Neighborhood Policy in the Black Sea region, and the Union's policy towards Russia. Russian sensitivity over the former territory of the Soviet Union can account for the conflict with Europe in the wake of the strengthening of relations with the states in the Black Sea region. Interpretivist scholarship has considered the enlargement policy the most effective normative tool of the EU.
