ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the premise that relations between Russia and the European Union (EU) inevitably involve tensions that influence the ways of doing business across the entire spectrum of multilateral and bilateral ties, yet have reached a point at which moderate political or economic fluctuations do not undermine the broader pattern of growing interdependence. The first parameter consists of the norms, values and institutions that Russia presently embodies both internally and externally, and which from time to time compete or clash with those of the EU. A second parameter is constituted by Russia's relationship to Brussels and, even more importantly, to European great powers such as Germany, France and Great Britain, each with a long historical lineage. A third parameter concerns the relations between the EU and Russia by way of the states and areas geographically located between the latter two, regardless of formal EU membership on the part of those states.
