Conclusion

This book has set out to capture and analyze the multitude of EU member state bilateral relations — what we also call national perspectives — with one of the EU's main ‘strategic partners’, the Russian Federation. This mapping exercise then enabled us to assess the extent to which bilateral member state relations constitute a challenge to the development of a coherent and effective EU Russia policy. Certainly, there is ample evidence in the chapters supporting the dominant assumption in the literature that tensions exist between bilateral initiatives and multilateral approaches. However, there is also suffi-cient evidence to suggest that in certain aspects of the EU-Russia relationship the bilateral relationships do play a constructive role.