ABSTRACT
Regionalism matters! This is at least the conclusion that could be drawn from the heated discussions and tug-of-war between the EU, Russia and various countries in Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus in the wake of the Vilnius summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership in late 2013. The EU put pressure on the various countries to enter into closer institutional and economic links with the EU and not with Russia. It also intensified its diplomatic efforts to convince a key country like Ukraine to fulfil the EU’s criteria for a further upgrade of bilateral relations, needed to sign an Association Agreement with the EU. Vice-versa, Russia explicitly warned countries like Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine that it would be a mistake to seek closer ties with the EU and it threatened with potential counter-reactions against countries that would opt for the EU. Moscow also tried to convince the neighbouring countries to instead join the regional projects which Russia had launched: the Customs Union and Common Economic Space of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, as part of Russia’s wider ambition to establish a Eurasian (Economic) Union to be joined by other countries in the post-Soviet space. Interestingly, both the EU and Russia consider the regional projects they promote as incompatible with each other, economically as well as politically.
