ABSTRACT
This chapter examines both external and internal factors that contribute to explaining Russia's increasing uniqueness regarding European Union (EU) policies in the former Soviet Union. It analyses the way in which Russia disturbs the EU's policy vision in the former USSR. The EU and Russia have increasingly become interdependent within the context of EU enlargement, a shifting dynamic which called for the renovation of their relationship and the development of a strategic partnership following low-grade relations in the 1990s. Russia's contest over its relationship with the EU should be placed in the wider context of its evolving foreign policy. Over the past decade, the EU's policy toward Russia has undoubtedly been deeply altered by the Union's own transformations, first of all by its Eastern enlargement. It is also forged and constrained by the degree of European integration in those areas which are crucial in the EURussia partnership, for example, energy or the visa regime.
