The CIS region is of vital importance for the EU countries considering that both are interconnected through cooperation or membership in supranational political and economic institutions (OSCE, WTO, OECD, NATO, etc.), through transport and energy corridors, through investment, trade and...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the economic aspects of EU policy towards its Eastern neighbors in the former Soviet Union. For a long period of time, this region was considered as less important for the EU, as compared to Central and Eastern Europe, which was the subject of a...

This paper claims that the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) of the EU, and in particular the elements related to justice and home affairs (JHA), is a complex, multilayered initiative that incorporates different logics and instruments. To unravel the various layers of the policy, the paper...

This working document offers a conceptual framework for understanding the processes underpinning the external dimension of EU Justice and Home Affairs (ED-JHA). Practically, it defines how the export of JHA principles and norms inform the geopolitical ambitions of the EU, i.e. the use of space...

With the Eastern Enlargement successfully completed, the EU is searching for a proper balance between internal security and external stabilisation that is acceptable to all sides. This paper focuses on an EU foreign policy instrument that is a case in point for this struggle: EC visa...

The CIS countries' EU-related interests are very heterogeneous. The countries themselves differ not only in terms of their geopolitical and geo-economic situations, and how those affect their relations with the EU, but also in their levels of ambition in relation to the Union, as well as their...

This paper analyses the effect of the EU enlargement process on income convergence among regions in the EU and in the Eastern neighbourhood of the EU. The data used is NUTS II regions in the EU and Oblasts' of Russia over the period 1996-2004. The estimation techniques used take into account...

This paper provides the quantitative estimate of the potential growth bonus for CIS countries, and in particular EU's Easter Neighbours, that can be a result of deeper institutional harmonisation with the EU. Econometric investigation involving instrumental variable, simultaneous equation and...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various challenges facing European integration and the EU institutional architecture as result of the global financial crisis. The European integration process is not yet complete, both in terms of its content and geographical coverage. It can be...

Institutional harmonization is an important part of European integration, and its effects are more far reaching than the effects of trade liberalization. In its policy towards neighbors (the European Neighborhood Policy, ENP), the EU puts a lot of stress on the desirability of institutional...