Can the EU’s new global strategy make a difference? Strengthening resilience in the Eastern Partnership countries

Abstract

This article assesses the European Union's (EU) performance in promoting societal resilience in the Eastern Partnership countries (EaP) on examples of Georgia and Ukraine. We examine two approaches to external resilience-building employed by the EU: support for the sources of societal resilience (social trust, legitimacy of governance actors, design of governance institutions) and prevention of domestic and external risks. Our research shows that while Ukraine and Georgia possess a moderate degree of societal resilience both countries also suffer from a high exposure to domestic and external risks, making them dependent on external resilience-building support from the EU. Analysis of the EU's resilience-building agenda in Georgia and Ukraine shows a mixed record for the EU. While the EU managed to strengthen sources of resilience and alleviate domestic risks in both countries, it failed to mitigate geopolitical risks: leaving the window open for new conflicts and endangering the sustainability of its resilience agenda.

The European Parliament as Transformational Actor toward the Reconsideration of the EU Eastern Policy

“…Furthermore, if in 2005 Leonard (2005) pointed out that the transformative power of the EU in its immediate neighbourhood was expected to create a substantial change in political status quo in the given region, in 2015 Keukeleire and Delreux (2015: 46) argued that the EU lost the structural foreign policy competition with Russia in the region of the EaP. Having said that, the most recent observations argue that the EU engagement into geopolitical competition with Russia has stopped the deterioration of the situation in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine (Kakachia et al 2021(Kakachia et al : 1348.…”

“…One might recall, the concepts of 'resilience' and 'principled pragmatism' were put at the core of the EU foreign and security policy in terms of its Global Strategy (Rieke and Riddervold 2021: 460). At the same time, despite moderate successes of EU attempts to strengthen societal resilience in Ukraine before 2022 it has managed to develop the sources of resilience and led to the mitigation of domestic risks (Kakachia et al 2021(Kakachia et al : 1348.…”

Evolution Of The Eastern Partnership Project: Strategic Use Of “Soft Power” Of The European Union Against Russia

“…При этом ЕС считает выполненными 3 из 4 ключевых целей до 2020 г. -в сферах экономики, общества и экологии, в то время как для эффективного государственного управления нужно усилить контроль за соблюдением основных прав человека, борьбу с коррупцией и обмен опытом ЕС с местными правительствами 28 .…”

A new business as usual? The impact of the ‘resilience turn’ on the EU’s foreign policy and approach towards the eastern neighbourhood

“…Bargués and Morillas (2021) argue that the resilience infused objectives of the EU in relation to its neighbours focus on three priorities: effective governance through fair, inclusive and transparent institutions; social and inclusive dialogue; and the legitimacy of governance actors. This means that in relation to the neighbourhood, resilience has been largely framed as 'a domestic process with external actors supporting or spoiling the process of resilience-building' (Kakachia, Legucka, and Lebanidze 2021). Much as the literature on Europeanisation and external governance has long emphasised, the EU's insistence on applying a series of more less clearly articulated recipes for achieving reforms can have negative unintended outcomes and lead to populist and corrupt leaders to take hold on power, as adoption costs increase (Korosteleva 2020a).…”

“…In the eastern neighbourhood, the resilience turn has not really engaged with the frozen conflicts that affect the region (or its geopolitical structure). Kakachia, Legucka, and Lebanidze (2021) also find that the choice of the EU to focus on local resilience has overlooked in the case Georgia and Moldova the role of geopolitics factors associated with frozen conflicts, which in the end has undermined the EU's effectiveness. Rather, the EU's discourse now frames the burden on the neighbourhood states, as the EU claims to provide them with the proper tools to become resilient and work towards solving frozen conflicts or managing geopolitical constraints (Morgherini 2018).…”