ABSTRACT
Following the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2003–2004, the EU stepped up its engagement with the post-Soviet countries located in Europe. The EU exercises its ‘transformative power’ (Grabbe 2006) by thickening and deepening functional cooperation with these countries and thereby stimulating their political and economic transformation. Yet the EU strategy has clear limits: no membership is on offer to any more of the post-Soviet states. Rather the Union offers them prospects of integration into the internal market, something which hinges on the convergence of the post-Soviet states with the acquis communautaire, a body of EU laws, regulations and judicial review.
